Sometimes when a title reaches a point of success, the developers try to shake things up with the sequel. This sort of thing is likely why a downhill biking game like the original Descenders received a boarding sequel in Descenders Next. This is a game where you’ll race and perform tricks through all sorts of trails and parks from the peaks of snowy mountains to the dirt trails of canyons, with medals and trophies to track your progress.
Plot Ahoy!
Given the nature of Descenders Next, there isn’t really a story. You’re given a brisk tutorial and then are sent on your way to conquer the slopes. Descenders Next has a light roguelike feel to it where you can play on trick courses, time trials, and more, but you also need to successfully board your way through different trails to reach your new destinations.
Players have a set number of lives to tackle randomly generated wilderness trails, and wiping out for any reason while on these trails will reduce your lives by one. After clearing a trail, you’ll be shown a map with different directions you can work toward until your lives run out. Thankfully, you can regain a life by doing whatever trick challenges are available for the trail you’re on, and once you reach a park, you can keep aiming for the high scores to earn rainbow medals and trophies.
Descenders Next is available on the Steam platform for the PC and also for the Xbox Series X. Cross play is enabled too, so console and PC players can tackle the trails together if they want.
Review Notes
One major thing to note with Descenders Next is that, at least until the controls are second nature, it feels very sluggish, especially at the start. You’re thrown into a very quick tutorial that you can’t repeat – which is a bit of an odd choice because this means if Descenders Next crashes during the tutorial, there’s no way to ever replay it again. Players are given a basic rundown of some of the skills needed in order to survive in Descenders Next. And then you are basically thrown directly into the world map where you can pick whatever trail you’d next like to play.
The controls are, for the most part, simple enough. The largest issue is that you turn with both left and right sticks, and jump by holding down on the right stick for a moment, then tilting the right analog up. Accelerating at the start of a slope consists of a tiny hop to gain speed, and you can tilt your board by tilting the left analog up or down, and can crouch to go faster down the mountain too. After jumping, you can perform a variety of tricks by spinning in the air, pressing a shoulder button to grab the board, etc.
You’ll quickly reach points where you start moving too fast, and slowing down isn’t exactly intuitive because you need to tilt both analog sticks to the side in order to slow yourself. The issue lies in the fact that carving like the title wants you to do can very easily lead to you turning too much and getting thrown off the beaten path for the course you’re playing. Speed control is of the utmost importance in Descenders Next, and with a little practice, you’ll be carving and zig zagging like the best of them. The controls of this game aren’t as fluid as something like Shredders, nor were they meant to be, but this choice can make it a little less accommodating to a new player who missed the first Descenders title.
The randomly generated trails, of which there don’t seem to be a huge amount of variance therein, are all pretty short and to the point. You’ll accelerate from 0 to 40mph very quickly and will need to carve off your speed so you can perform tricks and not go splat against every tree, rock, or metal pole jutting out of the ground. Once everything clicks, Descenders Next feels pretty great to play. There isn’t a ton of content right now, just a snowy mountain for snowboarding and a canyon for mountain boarding, but that’s basically the life of all early access games.
You can see other players boarding at the same locations you are, which is a pretty cool feature. You can’t exactly interact with them, so it reminds me of seeing other players in Super Mario Wonder, where you can see how other players are doing but not much beyond that. Apparently, multiplayer in the original Descenders was much more involved and allowed players to move to different stages together, but the multiplayer system present in Descenders Next is pretty hands off all things considered. If you and your friends both choose the same node to play next, then you can see each other on that trail, but that’s about as far as multiplayer goes for now.
The visuals of Descenders Next aren’t anything to write home about, but the soundtrack on the other hand deserves a pretty good amount of praise. There’s EDM tracks like Koven’s Time Is On Our Side, Muzzy’s In the Night, and many more. There are a lot of tracks that fit this extreme sport vibe super well and assuming you’re a fan of this style of music, the soundtrack for Descenders Next will not leave you wanting.
TLDR
Descenders Next is a competent boarding game that’s a little light on content right now. The controls take a little while to get used to, but needing to manage your speed carefully so you don’t ram into a tree or something can be a great challenge. The title having limited lives as you choose different nodes on the world map to tackle gives some decent replayability to the existing content, though this is definitely going to be one to keep an eye on as new biomes and courses get added down the line. Descenders Next is fun, but the feeling that there could’ve been even more added to this early access package is difficult to shake.