‘Carveout 2160’ is an ambitious indie snowboarding game that, if done well, could be pretty special.
Byteparrot
Every now and then, a game preview takes you on a light-speed nostalgia trip. Feature 2160 is one of the best examples of that: a snowboarding hopeful that takes you back to the late 90s and early 2000s, where extreme sports titles were a dime a dozen, and almost all of them completely ignored gravity.
The fifth and sixth generation of consoles became popular and ended a great place in gaming when Activision Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater was king (and led to great spin-offs like Matt Hoffman’s Pro BMX) the Dreamcast followed its own predictably strange path Jet Set Radio and TrickStyle; others tried to find even stranger directions with Scooter Freestyle Razor and uh BMXXX.
But Feature 2160 is a new IP in snowboarding, which was responsible for the fastest and craziest games of the time. The one that started with Cool Boarders and Snowboard Kids soon transformed by 1080 Snowboardingwhich completely rewrote the rulebook (even with its brutal controls), before THPS inspired developers to create games around the culture and soundtracks, giving us the underrated MTV Sports: Pure Ride, highly overrated Shaun Palmer’s Pro Snowboardingand SSX Tricky: the best of the bunch.
Feature 2160 it’s not just based on its obscene highs SSX Tricky — also folds Wipeout into the mix to promise a futuristic win-or-die tournament in space, why not?
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It is the next game from Byteparrotthe solo indie dev studio from Austrian developer Johannes Lugstein, who released Slopecrashers last year — and it clearly builds on the more family-friendly foundations of its debut.
Feature 2160 seems to be a T-for-Teen approach to the incredible Rollerdromewhere entertainment in space is still focused on sports and “the foursome who fund this whole space program had a great idea to take extreme sports to a whole other level: a high-speed snowboarding race to the death in which the winner gets all the riches they want.”
He also aims to follow in his footsteps SSX Tricky with it being “easy to play, hard to control” and has confirmed a few features:
- Splitscreen for four players
- Eight player online multiplayer
- Game modes including racing, trick events and time attack
- Arcade snowboard mechanics, including grinding, tricks and combo systems
- A boost system to break shortcut barriers and take down opponents
- Gadgets, such as grappling hooks and rocket launchers
‘Carveout 2160’ already looks great.
Byteparrot
Even at this beta stage, the game looks pretty amazing – a nice mix of over-the-top locations, lightning-fast pacing and smooth trick mechanics, but it’s still early days – the lack of a HUD is telling (but you can assume it will have one), and some of the areas feel a bit sparse and overwhelming. lessons may need some follow-up.
It’s also on Unreal Engine, on a maxed-out PC for the game’s trailer, so you can only assume it’ll need a fair amount of optimization, even if its minimum specs (Ryzen 5 2600 @ 3.4GHz / Intel Core I5-8400 @ 2.5GHz, 8GB RAM / 4GB RAM / GeForce 5 XX1; 570 8GB) are reasonable.
As it is, Feature 2160 it’s only available for PC, but hopefully Byteparrot will follow its path Sled game and bring it to consoles. Meanwhile, you can wish it on Steam.
