Also On: PS5, Xbox Series X, Switch
Publisher: THQ Nordic
Developer: Question Games
Medium: Digital/Disc/Cart
Players: 1-4
Online: Yes
ESRB: M
When I saw South Park: Snow Day get announced, I think myself and plenty others were shocked by the change from the typical 2D RPG style they went with for Stick of Truth and Fractured but Whole into a 3D style used in this game. Not to mention I don’t think anybody was all that sure how a more roguelite-ish take on the series would work. I’ll be honest, I was quite surprised at how fun and entertaining this game was.
Snow Day takes a completely new direction for the modern South Park games and I think it’s honestly quite a fun difference. Matt Stone did an interview talking about inspirations and what made him want to make such a different style of game, and one of his main inspirations was Hades of all games. If you follow games media to any capacity, I’m sure you know how much praise Hades has been given from players and journalists everywhere. Miraculously, Matt Stone, Trey Parker, and the rest of the team(s) involved in the development of South Park: Snow Day have created quite a fun and enjoyable experience in this 3D roguelite take on the series. You’ll be taking on hordes of enemies as you battle your way through the kids’ new game and uncover the truth behind the massive snow storm overtaking South Park, unlocking new upgrades and modifiers as you play.
Currently, the game offers 3 melee weapons and 3 ranged weapons for you to play with throughout your playthroughs, with DLC adding more throughout the year. The part that I didn’t expect with these weapons was how ridiculous you can make them with various upgrades and builds. For instance, I was playing through this game with another one of our staff, Tyler, and he ended up picking all his upgrades for daggers and bleed damage. It got to a point where he was one or two hitting almost every enemy in the game solely because he focused on one type of playstyle. This can be done with each of the 6 weapons as well as their special effects, so you don’t have to worry about one build being worse than another. Some of the ranged weapons allowed you to cast chain lighting and leave trails of fire, cause fart explosions, and a lot more.
In addition to having some solid build variety, you have a limited power up called “Bullshit Cards”. These are effectively ultimate abilities you have a limited number of uses on per stage and can drastically turn the battles in your favor. Let’s say you wind up in a situation where you’re being overwhelmed by enemies, but you don’t have a healing ability. Don’t worry about that, because you can play your Bullshit Card and cast a giant meteor storm, summon a bunch of minions, or give you and your teammates a radioactive area of effect. There are obviously more than these abilities, but these are some of the few myself and Tyler made plentiful use of throughout our playthrough.
Another huge factor of the game you’ll be interacting with a lot is the skill tree. If you’ve played RPGs before, you’re familiar with spending points to upgrade your passive abilities to make yourself stronger, and Snow Day is no exception. You’ll be collecting a material called Dark Matter as you play to spend on all sorts of upgrades, ranging from more maximum HP to less stamina consumption, to straight up more damage. It’s also worth noting that the upgrades aren’t miniscule and insignificant either. The upgrades you get via your Dark Matter resource are actually really beneficial and noticeable. We absolutely were looking for ways to upgrade our passive skills to see just how much we could really make our specific play styles as strong as possible. A huge quality of life feature that I absolutely love to see games doing more of nowadays is letting you freely refund and spend points as you wish. If you decide you want to try other upgrades but don’t have the points for it, fear not, because you can just disable upgrades and get a full refund for whatever points you spent. This is a feature I cannot stress enough is amazing for trying out different build varieties and I hope to see more games use.
It would be criminal of me to not talk about how much South Park DNA is in this game. If you’re a fan of the older seasons, this is absolutely a game up your alley with its humor and dialogue. From accusing Kyle of using his “dirty Dru magic”, to Mr. Hankey, and to even just the general banter between the kids, this is an absolutely hilarious title. We were quite honestly hard pressed to find a moment where we weren’t laughing so hard our chests hurt or had tears forming in our eyes. The complete and unfiltered use of classic and old school South Park humor is downright amazing, and I cannot possibly underestimate that. Nearly every line of dialogue is fantastic and hits in just the right way you’d want and expect Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s writing to hit.
Overall, I believe that South Park: Snow Day is quite a great time. It offers good replay value with changes to the game once you complete the main campaign, encounters seem to change when you replay levels, and it just offers a lot of that fun roguelike/roguelite feel we’ve come to enjoy from other titles. I genuinely believe that for the price point, get your friends together and I think you’ll enjoy yourselves a ton. It’s a very well put together game, and I don’t believe we encountered any bugs in our playthrough other than maybe some collision issues in terrain. It’s just a very solid title, I don’t really have anything negative to say other than perhaps its length. Tyler and I managed to finish our first playthrough in roughly 4 to 5 hours, but again, it offers reasons to replay it, so I don’t particularly see that as an issue. Absolutely great release from the team at Question and from publisher THQ Nordic.
Note: THQ Nordic provided us with a South Park: Snow Day PC code for review purposes.
