South Park: Snow Day Review (PC)

A talking piece of poop with a Santa hat. Foul-mouthed elementary schoolers. A snowpocalypse of epic proportions. What do these things all have in common?

It’s a new South Park game, and it comes out tomorrow.

South Park: Snow Day is a significant departure from previous South Park releases in the gaming space, like The Stick of Truth and The Fractured But Whole. Unlike these games being RPGs existing in 2D, Snow Day is chock full of 3D-rendered environments and characters while also being a beat-em-up meets roguelite.

Snow Day takes place on a day like any other in South Park. A blizzard has hit South Park, shutting down the little mountain town and burying it in snow and ice. As the New Kid, I get to enjoy school being cancelled (potentially indefinitely) and play with my friends, slashing them with cardboard weapons and shooting fire out of wands.

I settled into Snow Day on a snow day of my own, ironically enough. While an inch of snow blanketed my neighborhood, the gang’s neighborhood was pelted with buckets upon buckets of snow. A volume of snow I’ve always dreamed of was the setting of the game. I was the new kid, playing dress up make-believe with Cartman, Kyle, Stan, Kenny, and Butters. It felt like the game was properly written to connect with the silliness and crudeness of the boys’ adventures – just like the original show.

South Park: Snow Day played like a general 3D-beat-em-up meets party-based dungeon crawler. I began in a starting hub where I could equip a melee and ranged weapon along with additional aesthetic and character perks thanks to NPCs. After selecting a mission, I was shown a cutscene, and off I went on an adventure.

My first few hours in-game felt like Diablo more than traditional beat-em-ups or shooters. Adventures were split up into five chapters, each containing a general goal and a randomly distributed set of levels full of enemies to defeat. Things are pretty straightforward from here – Defeat multiple waves of enemies and make my way through South Park. Completing an encounter granted me a reward in the form of a new ability. After completing multiple encounters and collecting additional upgrade, I squared up against a powerful boss. Defeating the boss ended the chapter and took me back to the hub where I initially started, allowing me to change my loadout and select a new chapter.

Combat felt simble, albeit imprecise and floaty, involving a melee attack, ranged attack, and two special abilities. I could dodge and run, too. My special attacks varied based on which weapon I equipped. For instance, if I had the daggers, I could run and dive into enemies while also inflicting the bleed status effect; a sword and shield utilized less attack combos and lacked the ability to inflict bleed, but I could deflect attacks with the shield. I could also use “Bullshit” cards a few times each chapter; my enemies could use similar “Bullshit” attacks, too.

The “Bullshit” of Snow Day was appropriately silly. I could summon kindergartners to fight for my little party of New Kids. I could also shoot lasers from my eyes. Upon an announcer yelling BULLSHIT in a deep voice, my enemies would render my melee weapons useless by turning them into pool noodles or turning my ranged weapons into cat toys. I kept forgetting to use these Bullshit abilities because of how quickly I cleared through enemies, but they did come in handy during boss battles.

I had access to a handful of abilities, unlocking more as I completed achievements and advanced the story. There weren’t that many overall, but they changed up my kit in a way that I could slightly become more agile or better combine weapon attacks in devastating combinations. My favorite combination involved a gravity balloon that pulled enemies in while I used a magic wand to light the cluster of enemies on fire. I effortlessly cleared through enemies with that combination.

South Park: Snow Day lacks combat complexity, often involving button mashing over thoughtful attack chains. Timing abilities with weapon attacks ever-so-slightly varied up the combat, but I didn’t feel like there was depth to my attacks. Sure, I could level them up, and the abilities would augment them in a way that changed their aesthetic and slightly modified their functions. For instance, one upgrade for the wand changed it from a flamethrower to a lightning rod that chained the fiery lightning between enemies. Its power remained generally the same – it was a flamethrower at the end of the day.

The longer I stuck with the game’s five chapters I got the feeling that the game’s combat wasn’t meant to be a complex affair. Instead, it was dumb fun. Simplicity isn’t always a bad thing, especially for a co-op game like South Park: Snow Day, but here I wanted something more. I wanted a meaningful sense of variety that made it so that my powers were truly evolving and growing stronger with me. I wanted my enemies to slightly change, evolving to become as strong as me, the supposed OP (overpowered) New Kid. But enemies started feeling like sponges, rarely changing up their attacks.

The idea of the game being dumb fun was further driven home by the lack of gameplay variety. The harsh majority of the game’s five chapters began playing out the same: Survive waves of enemies, go to the next room, get an upgrade, rinse and repeat. While I could explore the levels and come across well-placed chests that would grant me loot and additional upgrades, I kept thinking that I would come across something, anything, that would encourage me to utilize the co-operative nature of the game. I kept hoping for things like tower defense, mild puzzles, or even a capture-the-flag-like scenario, but no – only fighting.

In case you’re worried about not having friends or preferring a solo-run – you can play Snow Day entirely on your own. Instead of other players, you’ll have bots to join your party. The handful of times I was downed, the bots were smart enough to rush over to me and bring me back to life. Somehow, they weren’t smart enough to stay out of harm’s way, so I ended up needing to revive them more than vice versa. I won’t go so far as to say that a solo-run of Snow Day is a subpar experience, but it’s probably best enjoyed with others. Luckily there’s public matchmaking, so utilize that if your Steam friends don’t yet own Snow Day.

Perhaps the presence of light combat and button mashing is a good thing for solo players. I’m unsure how well bots would properly figure out how to solve puzzles and behave in a way that would progress the game in meaningful fashions. It just leads to a watered down experience that left me wanting more to do with my friends. Snow Day’s combat is dumb fun, yes, but it could be enhanced with additional objectives. Heck, having synergy abilities (like those in Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3) would help enhance the co-op experience and make it more chaotic than its current state.

It took several hours in for me to realize that Snow Day is a roguelite. Despite getting new cards after every encounter that made slight changes to my loadout, I never really felt like the game had enough variance to make me feel like there were meaningful differences as I progressed through each chapter. It wasn’t until I had failed a few chapters and was sent back to the hub (rather than simply restarting the current encounter) where things clicked and I realized that the game was giving me the lightest of roguelite gameplay.

I say this because I usually expect variance to be front-and-center in a roguelite. Every run should be the same. It should be a gauntlet that spans 20, 30, possibly 40 minutes. Skill expression should manifest in the form of navigating that variance and attempting to make do with the lesser of several evils or identifying the optimal choice of several good options. I was able to make runs feel and play the same by rerolling ability cards at the end of an encounter. The three melee and three ranged weapons didn’t help, either.

If Snow Day was to be a roguelite, or even be a more difficult roguelite to stand alongside the greats of Hades, Gungeon, and the current roguelite of the month – Balatro, my abilities or weapons should be randomly assigned. Better yet, that should be a separate mode in and of itself. There aren’t that many weapon/ability combinations in the game’s current state to make each new run of a chapter to be worth replaying or feel different. Heck, make a mode that encourages players to run through all five chapters without returning to the hub.

It should take most players around five hours to complete the game’s five chapters. Perhaps longer if you’re playing solo and are struggling with some of the encounters (such as the Chapter 3 encounter involving the sixth graders or the final boss of Chapter 5). The game’s achievement system offers little incentive to replay earlier chapters on harder difficulties at this time, but I have hope that future updates will add more to do in the base game to make it feel meatier.

At launch, there will be a free DLC (To Danse with Ravenous Shadows). It’s basically four horde mode levels. I tested some of them out during my review period and was mildly entertained, but I wanted additional complexity and more to do. It’s enough for a few hours of additional gameplay, but you’ll be wanting more.

Where does this leave South Park: Snow Day? Honestly, it’s dumb fun, but I want so much more from it before I can feel like it’s enough to replay with friends. The combat borders on chaotic, but there isn’t enough that takes advantage of cooperative gameplay. Its thematic is outstanding, but some folks might be wary of it being 3D rather than the traditional 2D South Park aesthetic.

My initial trepidation with Snow Day was its use of 3D. I’ve been a South Park fan for years – staying up late to watch the show on Comedy Central all the way to watching reruns on streaming. South Park has traditionally been a 2D show, existing on a paper plane (of sorts). The sole exception was the Make Love, Not Warcraft episode, but even then, the only 3D aspect was that of the WoW characters rather than of Cartman and crew. Despite Snow Day’s utilization of 3D and light tread into the uncanny valley of meshing art styles, this shift gave the South Park universe a very unique feel. I had more power to move around and see characters re-imagined in unfamiliar fashions.

I think shifts in art styles like this should be done more often. I know re-imagining longtime IP and creating new art styles come with considerable risk, but Snow Day’s implementation pays off. It felt like Question, THQ Nordic, and South Park Digital Studios were experimenting with defying longtime fans’ expectations of how their favorite characters should look. Even more, some of the 2D animation styles were preserved in how characters’ faces and emotions were conveyed. Getting past the shock of transcending planes, the visual experimentation gave me even more access to all things South Park.

If I was to praise Snow Day for one, and only one, aspect, it would be how well it nailed the overall thematic. The writing, voice acting, and plot are just as funny as the show itself. The ridiculousness of collecting toilet paper as currency and roleplaying with the South Park kids is not lost. If this wasn’t a game, it would feel like an excellent episode (or two) from the original show. I audibly laughed during multiple boss fights – especially since the final boss is connected to a recently released blockbuster movie based on a book. No spoilers – it’s worth getting to the end just to see the insanity that is the final boss.

South Park: Snow Day is dumb fun best played with friends. While it walks solidly down the middle of the road in terms of it being a roguelite and a beat-em-up mashup, it falls short in offering deep variance and complexity to make things feel fresh and worth the replay. It’s funny as hell, though, so that is worth the first playthrough. Hopefully additional content is on the way to freshen things up.