South Park: Snow Day review

We all loved The Stick of Truth and The Fractured But Whole RPG titles. I spent hours with both of them, not because it was South Park (which obviously helped, though), but because they were surprisingly deep and offered some genuinely fantastic gameplay. Not content with following the same genre, South Park: Snow Day swaps the 2D for a fully 3D world and characters, and switches up those roleplaying mechanics to make it a roguelike with full-on battles where you make use of a ton of different abilities and skills.

A blizzard has descended on South Park, and with no school, Cartman, Stan, Kenny, and Kyle get to LARP it up with all their friends in a town-wide game of fantasy roleplaying. You’re back as the New Kid to take part in proceedings, and after customising your look, you’re ready to jump into the action. I wasn’t really sure what to expect from South Park: Snow Day because in my mind it would be somewhat similar to the recent two titles we’ve seen from the boys. Developer Question, the team behind the underrated The Blackout Club, has done a good job of breathing new life into the franchise.

It’s still got that South Park humour, complete with cracking dialogue and abilities that let you fart on your enemies and more, and while the story isn’t the focus here, I still enjoyed visiting the different areas of the town and bumping into everyone from Mr Mackey to Mr Hankey. If you’re confused about what Snow Day is all about, it revolves around you and three friends (or bots) taking on waves of rival kids in a full-scale battle where you’ll be given various objectives to complete, and I was surprised by the amount of times I died in the early stages.

Combat is quite tough when you’re starting out because you don’t have a whole lot of special abilities, and you’re also pretty weak. Thankfully, the more you explore and play, the more chances you get to improve your character. There are three types of currency in South Park: Snow Day! Dark Matter will permanently improve certain stats so you’ll gradually become stronger and better equipped to jump back into the fight; Toilet Paper is in short supply in the town, but when you get a lot of it, you can use it to upgrade your power cards and shuffle them to switch out your powers; and Platinum Pieces, while don’t improve your powers, will get you some cool new cosmetics and emotes that feature various Easter Eggs from the show.

When it comes to the actual fighting, you’ll be able to use different weapons like a sword and shield or a bow, but I rarely strayed away from my daggers and the staff. Up close, melee is quite responsive, although there is a lack of impact to each swipe of your weapon that never makes you feel like you’re in total control. Using the staff allows you to launch projectiles at the enemy, with an AoE that can damage various kids at once, and I always preferred attacking from afar. Then you can equip two special cards that can offer a range of aid in battle, such as Bullrush, which allows you to fart yourself towards enemies with force. There are various attacking cards, but you can also equip ones that improve health like a totem that you throw on the ground and incrementally gives you HP back.

As you’re out in the field, bumping into Jimmy can improve the cooldown, power output, and more of both these special cards and your attacks with weapons, meaning you can temporarily improve your effectiveness during each run. Perhaps the coolest feature of battles in South Park: Snow Day are the “Bullshit” cards. They can only be used a certain amount of times during any one run, but they can get you out of a particularly tough fight. These can be anything from laser eyes, growing into giants, spawning extra allies, to a meteor shower, and while they don’t last forever, they’re cool to watch. Also, hearing “Bullshit” every time you use one never failed to make me smile.

Being so used to playing South Park in the normal 2D style didn’t make it weird when playing in 3D. After all, I’m old enough to remember playing South Park in first-person back on the N64 and PS1. The developer makes it work, and manages to make fighting much more enjoyable, especially when you’re using a range of attacks and cards to mix up runs every time. Like I said, it is tough in the early hours, and while it still remains a challenge the more you play, you feel better equipped thanks to the upgrades that come from spending your Dark Matter.

South Park: Snow Day is an interesting take on the roguelike genre, however, if it wasn’t for the fantastic humour and familiarity that Cartman and friends offers, I’m not sure I would have stuck with it. It can be difficult, and some of the melee combat is light and rather repetitive, but the variety of cards add plenty of variables to every run, and the Bullshit cards are a thing of beauty. It’s a fun game to play with friends, but if you want to play it alone, the AI of the bots is more than serviceable to give you a great time, and with some nice-looking visuals, it’s more than worth your time if you’re a fan of the show.