Dirtbike roguelike Descenders adds official mod support
Downhill jam
Turns out, bike modding is more than just sticking some paper on the back wheel to make it sound like a motorbike. After two years of steady downhill offerings, developers RageSquid want to breathe new life back into roguelike BMX 'em up Descenders by bringing official mod support into the fray. The Modding Update arrived last week with nearly a dozen new tricked out tracks, from two-dimensional remakes and small-screen shenanigans to vast, new mountainsides to skin your knees across.
Here's a wee peek at some brand new ways to break your legs on a bike.
Naturally, someone's already gone and recreated the quintessential BMX game in Descenders. Trials: Ascending slows down Descenders's downhill rush for slower, Trials-style push-bike parkour. Sitting somewhere between those free Flash games from way back and Ubisoft's later commercial offerings, it looks fine. It's neat that it exists.
But peddle puzzling isn't limited to to the second dimension. BikeOut is, shockingly, that Wipeout show off the telly, but with bikes. If you're never caught the show (lucky you), it's basically an endless stream of hapless goofballs getting dunked into the drink by giant foam orbs/bars/fists and such. Descenders's own adaptation looks like a wild little twist on dirtbike stunting, all without the mousey lad off Top Gear punning through your failures.
Modders aren't exclusively reinventing the wheel, of course. Plenty of the new maps on Descenders's mod.io hub are simply new playgrounds for trying out new tricks. These can all be found directly in-game through a new Mods menu on the title page. While Steam Workshop support was announced in the run-up to release, RageSquid have since pulled back to keep non-Steam players in the loop.
You'll need a little bit of Unity know-how to get started on creating your dream track. Fortunately, RageSquid have put together a quick guide for getting the fundamentals of a Descenders track set up as quickly as possible.