LifeisXbox’s Horatio Goes Snowboarding review | Eastasiasoft and Infinite State Games want to take the gaming community back to a time when games were simpler. Horatio Goes Snowboarding is a straight forward arcade-inspired game that challenges you for reaching highscores. All you need to do is control Horatio through busy streets and guiding him when he slides down a mountain.
Back to basics without much bells and whistles. Which, by the way is perfectly fine. Having these sorts of games to play for short game bursts are as important as regular big triple a games. That’s why we at LifeisXbox are always happy to write and publish reviews for smaller games too.
Horatio Goes Snowboarding (-and Street Crossing) is a fine arcade-inspired experience for short bursts of play.
ℹ️ Reviewed on Xbox Series X | Review code provided by PR/publisher, this review is the personal opinion from the writer.
What we liked!
- Simple gameplay | Horatio Goes Snowboarding has two gameplay elements, first is crossing streets and avoiding cars. Secondly is snowboarding downhill trying to go through gates and scoring bonus points for racing near trees. The concept is easy to understand and basically, everyone can play it. While the whole avoiding cars thing was my least favourite thing I did love the downhill sections a lot! The levels are randomly generated so you never know what to expect and it has enough variation so things remain interesting. You’ll even have freaking yeti’s changing you!
- Beating that high score feeling | Reaching the chopper, racing downhill and reaching the finish line. That’s how Horatio’s day looks like, the more days you manage to survive the higher your high score will be. Failing a run isn’t immediately game over as Horatio can pay hospital fees to heal his broken bones. This can only be done when you have money. You can earn a little bit of extra cash but the average play session for a high score run is about five to ten minutes. This loop can be pretty addictive but the inevitable been there, done that feeling isn’t far away either.
- Looks and sounds cute | They updated the graphics to a nowadays accepted level and the soundtrack is a pretty wicked nostalgic blast to ’80 and ’90 videogame classics. Keeping in mind that this is a little arcade game the levels look colourful with enough details. This ain’t no Shredders with visuals but it gets the job done. Stealing the show are the potato characters who are so charming that you feel bad when you hit them with Horatio.
Somewhere between
- Crossing the street section | At the start of a high score attempt, Horatio must cross three streets and avoid cars to GET TO THE CHOPPA (I’m sure you read that with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s voice in mind). Pretty neat at the beginning and nostalgic remembrance of Frogger, but this is also one of the main reasons why I quit Horatio Goes Snowboarding sooner than expected. You’ll be doing this a lot! After each successful run or failure, you need to cross the streets again and traffic becomes harder to avoid. I found myself quitting this game for something else as I got bored with this unnecessary hassle. It is a nice change of pace and helps with providing a different sort of gameplay but maybe they could have reduced this part a bit or made the endless mode easier to unlock for people who just wanted to play the downhill snowboarding.
- Endless mode | This mode unlocks when you reached an accumulated of one million points. While it is a motivation to keep playing I found it a way too grindy task to unlock this more challenging mode. Especially for those who aren’t gaming gods who get a lot of scores in runs.
What we disliked
- Quickly becomes wearisome | Not enough time to launch a Halo Infinite multiplayer round? Or to finish a race in Forza Horizon 5? Here’s where Horatio Goes snowboarding perfectly fits! When you play it for half an hour or more things do get very repetitive. Repeating the same things over and over again doesn’t do the game benefit in the long run. But again, limited time to play and this is a perfect game to pass the time with!
How long to beat the story | /
How long to achieve 1000G | 5 hours
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