As easy as it is to be sick to bloody death of snow, skiing will always be a good time. Granted, the adrenaline mostly comes from the downhill variety, but a little nordic cross-country skiing is generally welcome as well. Downhill needs a mountain, after all, while cross-country just requires enough snow to glide over. The adventurer Skaii has set out on a long nordic ski trip to see what they can find, and what they’ve found is trouble set to a pop beat under the gentle glow of the northern lights. It’s awfully pretty if you can avoid face-planting into a tree.
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Fresh Tracks is a musical cross-country skiing game, which is a concept that sounds like it would take a bit of explaining until you realize you’re traveling up a note track. Each song is a story, where Skaii ventures through the woods, across the plains, past ruins, and through the occasional fortress to impress the gods of the land. Each run is a trip through a random selection of songs, and when one song ends the track diverges into two or three options of varying difficulties. The note tracks of each song will be identical every time you choose it, but there’s no guarantee a song will shows up in a run. Each run is composed of a set number of tracks, and the only way to bank the different currencies you can find along the way is to complete it all the way to the last note of the last song.
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This is where things get tricky, because there are a good number of moves you can make and keeping track of them all takes a bit of practice. The note track/ski course has a variable number of lanes depending on the section of song, sometimes thinning down to one or opening up to five or more, not counting the times there might be an overhead track if you can just stay up there. Note-dots, called whyspers, guide you through the course, frequently in front of tree stumps or rocks to either avoid or hop over. Hopping, ducking, and switching lanes are done with the plus pad, and there’s even a double-jump for when you need a little extra air time.
Each song is a story, where Skaii ventures through the woods, across the plains, past ruins, and through the occasional fortress to impress the gods of the land.
The track can get crowded, though, so the left and right bumpers let you stay in the lane but lean to either side, and there are notes that can’t be picked up unless you lean into them. Finally, Skaii has a sword for clearing out trees and the occasional dancing skeletal enemy, and hitting them on the beat adds to a meter that, when full, lets you refill the health bar. It’s all highly manageable until you need to hold it together during a long stretch requiring multiple types of moves simultaneously, at which point it’s back to the start to try and do better next time.
Fresh Tracks was revealed today, and while it doesn’t have a release date yet beyond “2025” it will be available on PS5, Xbox X/S, and Steam whenever it lands. Sadly there’s no Next Fest demo to point you towards, but there’s at least a trailer showing off the musical skiing adventure in all its Euro-pop glory.
