I had high hopes for this game when I bought the Founder's pack a long time ago, when there was only one mountain. The game was free to play back then, and the Founder's pack was $50. I felt like chipping in for something I thought had a lot of potential. And potential it did have—exploring the wide open mountain was neat, the physics worked, people who bought the Founder's pack had special gear, and snowmobiles were supposedly in the works.

 Over time, though, I saw the game start to degrade. The physics got worse and worse, controls became increasingly stubborn, and when online rolled out it was a buggy, laggy mess. Soon after, microtransactions started and the mountain I enjoyed exploring got locked under a paywall. I didn't have access to it even though I bought the damn Founder's pack! That's when I gave up on the game entirely, uninstalling it without looking back.

 Apparently, the game never recovered. Multiplayer servers were removed. Support for VR mode, which was by all accounts pretty solid, was also removed. The game is $15 now and worse than it was when it was free. Poppermost built a really great foundation for what could have been the next best winter sports game, but unable to live up to their promises, ultimately destroyed it.

It’s hard to fault a game for being exactly what its title says its going to be but you know, I’m going to do it anyway. Slot Machine is a slot machine game where you bet a couple coins and try to see if you get three blobs that look like cacti or three blobs that look like TVs so you can get more coins to bet. This was before designers realized all gamers need are flashing colors and a rewarding sound effect to get the dopamine going just like how the slots hook old people in the saddest part of casinos, or honestly it was because this before it was possible to have either of those things, so instead you get a drab looking slot machine sort of that misses out on all the things that make slot machines depressingly addictive. Of all the pointless early Atari 2600 games this one might be the most pointless.

You can pump fake, you can dribble, you can shoot, you can steal. It's simply the best basketball game ever made.

I laughed, I cried, I was filled with child-like wonder.

Must play.