Review of Descenders mobile: a wheelie decent port

The goal of Descenders is to ride a bike down a hill as fast as you can while doing amazing acrobatics and avoiding death. It's fantastic material that distinguished Dutch developer RageSquid with its polish, feel, and all-around captivating quality. It's a tasty little indie game that can take hours out of the day, published by No More Robots.

That was, however, for consoles. You know, those massive, muscular devices with ray tracing capabilities. Noodlecake Studios, the team of Alto's Adventure, has agreed to help bring the game to a few small screens. And I'm happy to say that it performed really well.

Everything looks remarkably sharp, with vibrant hues and a respectable draw distance. There is still some pop-in, but that is to be expected while travelling at such a fast pace, and it doesn't really detract from the experience. Considering the compromises needed to fit it onto smaller hardware, it looks beautiful and has a wonderful feeling of ambiance as the sun sets and the shadows lengthen.

Fortunately, the whole addicting rogue-like cycle of the game still exists. In regular mode, you go across a map exploring various nodes; the further you go, the more reputation you may get. Gaining recognition entitles you to customised gear and other accessories to personalise your rider anyway you like.

The tricky part of all of this is that because the courses are created procedurally, each one of them may have a different combination of hills, stunts, speed, and general difficulty. You must adjust to various tracks that are always changing as you travel between these nodes; sometimes, these tracks even come with unique problems.

There may be no route on one track, leaving you to navigate around boulders and trees to get to your objective. Another would place you in the first person, with the dirt track front of you and just the rider's silhouette and handlebars visible. Then there are some that maximise the risk by increasing both the amount of reputation you get and the amount of health you lose when you fall.

It's also pretty endearing how whimsical the game is, distorting the fundamentals of the game merely for the sake of having fun. The game is similar to Art of Rally, a fantastic procedurally-generated toyetic rally game, but instead of emphasising vibes and flow, Descenders places more of an emphasis on creativity and difficulty. On a touchscreen, however, how far can that sensation stretch?

Yes, the issue that's on everyone's mind is this one: how are the controls? Granted, there are many entertaining add-ons available, but not everyone can afford them. The last time I played Mediaeval II: Total War In my opinion, the controls were rather remarkable, but they were still a significant step back from the original experience. Could you agree to that compromise, in closing?

Although it's lazy of me to keep looking at things from the same old perspectives and rehash old terrain, the Descenders mobile version raises the same issue. You may feel quite secure using the controls to do certain tricks and go down most slopes since they are really reliable.

However, using the touch screen to control your rider's direction will never be as precise as using a controller. I then set up Descenders on my iPad, plugged up my Xbox controller, and tried it out. It feels so much better, too, like you're playing on a larger Switch.

I felt more confident to adjust and fakie to my heart's content after switching to a gamepad, doing acrobatics I could never have imagined performing on a touchscreen. Additionally, there is excellent rumbling support and complete integration that required no setup on my part. It operates flawlessly on a gen-9 iPad with the A13 processor; I'm not using a fancy M1 iPad for this game.

After entering the flow, I began moving up the rankings and rediscovering the enchantment that Descenders had. I spent hours playing, gathering things and doing tasks in half the time it would have took me on my iPhone. At this point, the game starts to resemble its origins, having an addictive quality similar to that of SSX Tricky or similar games. I was unable to locate this sensation only on the touchscreen, however.

Is this, therefore, a critique? Not really, however. Although I believe the game is a little too complicated to fully use on a touch screen, Noodlecake Studios did an excellent job—I can't think of a better method to handle it. It's merely an inefficient method of managing a game where the thrill is in how deep the tricks may become.

It's a victory in my opinion since the basic experience can be enhanced simply by attaching a console controller. Your large phone or tablet may become more than simply a mobile device—rather than just a portable console—as more games get these fantastic conversions.

Descenders is a hit game on mobile devices, and the only thing keeping it from being great is the technology itself—limitations that are here to stay and won't be getting any better anytime soon. The plus is that it can be made into the rich and captivating experience it is on the beefier computers with the help of gamepad grips for phones and simple console controller configuration for tablets. The most important thing is that it's a success.