Today, Toronto-based developer Snowman, in partnership with Land & Sea, has launched Alto’s Adventure: The Spirit of the Mountain on Apple Arcade. Celebrating the 7th anniversary of the game, the studio has released a remastered version of its beloved title as an exclusive to Apple’s gaming service.
For the uninitiated, Alto’s Adventure: The Spirit of the Mountain is an endless snowboarding game split into various levels. Players barrel down a mountainside and along other locations, completing objectives and hitting highscores. Snowman aimed to maintain that core loop of their game while offering improvements and new bits of content to the remaster.
Fans of the original 2015 Alto’s Adventure should find themselves right at home when playing the remastered version. As players glide down the mountain, they’ll be instructed to collect coins and avoid obstacles. Tapping the screen on an iPhone or iPad, the player will jump over incoming rocks and avoid breaks in the terrain. By tapping and holding the screen, players can perform 360-degree tricks and string them together across their runs. You may also use a compatible controller while playing.
The basis of Alto’s Adventure: The Spirit of the Mountain is to complete given challenges successfully during each run. Challenges can consist of having to rescue a set number of llamas by riding next to them. Other challenges can consist of collecting a certain number of coins or getting a set score by performing combos. As players complete the series of challenges, they will enter a new level and be dolled out more. Alto’s Adventure: The Spirit of the Mountain offers 180 to complete alongside the new content.
Players can collect coins to use in exchange of upgrades in the Workshop. Here, you’ll find options to increase the duration of the Coin Magnet, an item found on levels to automatically collect nearby coins. You can also invest coins into purchasing a helmet to protect from a single crash. Wingsuits can also be purchased to give you a bit more airtime for additional combos.
Alto’s Adventure: The Spirit of the Mountain features a dynamic day and night cycle. As you play, you’ll be taken from sunkissed villages to sillouette-covered forests. There’s a diversity of locations in the game that stitch themselves together in a seamless way. It’s part of the endless snowboarding design that Snowman knows through and through.
The biggest addition to the game is the introduction of a new character. Without divulging too much information regarding the character, it was a nice carrot at the end of the stick to experience the game after all these years. To access the new content, players will have to complete a new set of challenges later on in the game. Upon reaching level 7, players must travel between 5000m-6000m, which is considerably a lot. Additionally, they must find and collect 10 artifacts.
Although Alto’s Adventure: The Spirit of the Mountain does feature a simple control scheme, the game can be quite challenging at times. Juggling the collection of coins and artifacts with completing combos and avoiding obstacles is no easy feat.
Though, it does incentivize continuous play and the reward of a new character is worth the effort put in. This character offers unique abilities and brand new optional challenges. Once unlocked, when playing as the new character, Lost Goals will periodically appear. These new challenges test the mettle of players in exciting ways. At launch, 20 Lost Goals are available. Though Snowman has stated more will be added post-launch.
For existing players of Alto’s Adventure, you can import your progress over to the Alto’s Adventure: The Spirit of the Mountain remaster. In order to do so, open Alto’s Adventure: The Spirit of the Mountain and navigate to the settings menu. There, you’ll find the option to ‘Transfer Adventure Progress.’
Apple Arcade is available in Canada for $5.99/month on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV.
