Grand Mountain Adventure: Wonderlands PC Review

Snowsport games used to be two-a-penny. I and many Gamecube fans will remember the cathartic thrills of SSX, and one of my favorite games on the Dreamcast was the appropriately titled “Snow Surfer”: an arcade-style romp through absurdly treacherous winter locations. 

While channeling the same inherent addictiveness of flips and slides, Grand Mountain Adventure: Wonderlands is pretty far removed from either of those games. This is a much more relaxing atmosphere compared to the breakneck pace of traditional snowboarding games, and the visuals and the music are similarly serene.
 

 

The title was originally on mobile, and in the move to Switch and PC, the look and feel have been greatly improved. Looking down at our player from an isometric-Esq birds-eye view, Ground Mountain Adventure presents a novel take on the genre: as opposed to having set courses that the player loads into, this title intuitively takes place in a hub world. 

Everything is set out like a winter resort — and it looks great. Through a superb use of lighting, perspective, and appealingly realistic snow physics, Grand Mountain Adventure: Wonderlands presents a surprising level of realism considering its basic graphics; the game is made of admittedly very simple polygons, so I was impressed by how alive it all felt. While the trees and building share a distinctly stylized low-poly look, you’ll bare whiteness to beautiful sunrises, sunsets, and mesmerizing bodies of water: it’s a difficult balance to strike, and the devs should be commended for their achievements. 
Performance-wise, the game didn’t skip a beat. The PC version provided a solid 60 frames per second (as well as the option to switch to 30 FPS for some reason).

The aesthetic isn’t the only change in this PC and Switch port, though — nor is it the main one. Grand Mountain Adventure: Wonderlands has had a ton of new content added in the scope of new areas, courses, and challenges. There’s also the option of a four-player co-op. 

Pretty visuals and a truckload of content are irrelevant without solid gameplay, of course, but thankfully, the game mostly delivers on that front. The controls are intuitive and simple, but you might not know it at first. There’s a distinct lack of any tutorialized elements, and it took me a good while to figure out exactly how to make my character move more than an inch forward. 

You’ll get the hang of it eventually, and when you do, perfecting the art is a joyous experience. All of your typical board sports moves are here, from vertical and horizontal spins to grinds and high speed drifting; it induces the same flow state as something like the games in the Tony Hawk series. You start off pretty terrible but, after a couple of hours, the controls feel like an extension of your human abilities. 
 

 

There are a wide array of distinct courses and trials to practice your new skills with. The difficulty curve between these levels increases appropriately, and the game keeps you coming back in a ‘just one more time trial’ sort of way. The way the progression works is simple yet effective: completing trials earns you ski tickets that enable you to progress further into the gameplay. 

As is typical of these sorts of games, you have the opportunity to earn bronze, silver, and gold medals for each course, and you’ll no doubt find yourself replaying the same challenge over and over to unlock everything. Thankfully, with the difficulty being nicely balanced, so the challenge in earning these harder medals falls nicely in between not frustratingly difficult nor boringly easy. 

There were the occasional cheap difficulty spikes, but because the game offers an instant rewind function at the press of a button, you won’t have any lingering resentment for a particularly troublesome course. 

Despite the extreme nature of the sport — as well as an emphasis on the necessity to race and beat times and scores — there isn’t a lot of pressure to do so. You’re mostly free to explore the mountains at your own pace and, owing to each seamlessly integrating hub world, Grand Mountain Adventure: Wonderlands presents a thoroughly relaxing experience.

Further to this idea is the fittingly named ‘Zen mode’: an option that allows for the total removal of times, scores, and even NPCs for an even more meditative play style.

The whole feel is helped along by the excellent soundtrack. Distant, reverberating pianos swell and plinkier as you zip through the snow, and there’s the occasional electronic influence that seeps in, too. It’s a far cry from the Nu-Metal influences of traditional snowboarding games, that’s for sure, and it’s all the better for it. There’s even a jukebox function that enables you to play the music outside of the game.
 

 

For those looking for a more competitive experience, there’s the aforementioned co-op mode. This feature enables four-player challenges across the game's innumerable challenges — a nice feature to see given the overall solitary nature of the base game. 

I did really enjoy this title, but I think it would be best suited to the Switch — and where the Switch version is concerned, the main sticking point there will be the cost. The price jump from mobile to Switch is rather steep: $5 to $40. On PC, the game can be had for a more reasonable $20.

As previously stated, there’s a vastly differing amount of content between the two versions, but this is, no doubt, best experienced as a mobile game. 

It's unfortunate players have to pay such a premium for Switch: I’m not certain there’s enough new content to warrant a $35 hike. But, ultimately, we’re talking about PC here, and at the asking price for this platform, it’s is certainly worth it. 

It may be prudent to try out the game on mobile first to see if the gameplay style resonates with you. If it does, be rest assured that you’ll have a good time with the Switch or PC version. There is a wealth of content to explore to keep you coming back, and hopefully, the developers will continue to support the game with free content over the years, too. 

Whether or not this new version of the game is worth the money will be up to you, but there’s no doubt that Grand Mountain Adventure: Wonderlands is a highly enjoyable, highly relaxing, and novel take on an age-old genre. 
 

Linden Garcia,
Editor, NoobFeed