GAME OF THE DAY
Alto’s Odyssey
Alto's Odyssey
Discover the endless desert
How do you create a sequel to an experience as flawless and intuitive as Alto’s Adventure, the multi-award-winning snowboarding game?
Take the original’s backflipping downhill action and beautiful scenery and amplify it.
As its name suggests, Alto’s Odyssey—with 180 challenges to tackle as well as new characters to unlock—has a far broader scope than Adventure. You can choose among multiple routes, with the riskiest ones earning you the most gold coins. Keep a high line by bouncing off hot-air balloons, for example, and you’ll be rewarded handsomely, especially if you master the newly introduced art of wall-riding.
We spent a month toying with a series of new mechanics. More complex ones ended up on the cutting room floor.
—Eli Cymet, Team Alto
And if you just want to admire the beautiful desert landscapes (Odyssey swaps sand for Adventure’s snow), try the popular Zen mode, where game-over screens are no more. When Alto hits something, he simply gets back up and carries on.
Odyssey has the same easy-to-master controls as its predecessor—a conscious decision, according to Eli Cymet of Team Alto. “Any new touch inputs almost immediately made the game too hectic and frenzied,” he says. “We went to great lengths to preserve the things about Alto that players have come to love—that sense of serenity foremost among them.”