Lonely Mountains: Downhill is "a different kind of sports game," according to two-man German developer Megagon Industries. We knew that when we got our first look at the unorthodox biking game earlier this year, but with Lonely Mountains now on Kickstarter and considerably more fleshed-out, its vision of fighting a mountain is really starting to take shape.
More concerned with scenery than scoreboards, Lonely Mountains is mainly about riding a bike down a mountain by navigating a path of your own design. You won't run into any out-of-bounds barricades or other players, just rocks and trees and slopes. "The mountain is your only opponent," Megagon says, "and nature your only companion." That being said, it's not exactly a meditative experience.
"You will crash and you'll crash a lot," Megagon says, "but you can instantly restart at the last checkpoint (which is never too far behind), and due to our ragdoll system crashing is actually quite fun—especially for the people watching you crash."
On top of pleasant simplicity, the big selling point is the diversity of experiences. There are several hand-crafted mountains with numerous trails snaking down them, from the Rockies to the Grand Canyon. You can also tune your bike to match your course and play style, optimizing for, say, turning or landing.
Different game modes are also nested within these options. 'Classic time trial mode' is exactly what it sounds like, whereas 'hard time trial mode' penalizes you for crashing. 'Challenge mode' gives you specific challenges like landing long jumps or reaching certain locations, and 'one life mode' is as daunting as it is self-explanatory.
Megagon is asking for $41,195 to bring Lonely Mountains: Downhill to life. If its Kickstarter campaign is successful, it will release mid-2018. At the time of writing, it has earned $16,101 and will run for another 28 days.
