Finally, I’d done it. I’d made my avatar do a 360.
He twirled through the air, executed a tidy grab, and landed back on the snow in one piece. Before then, though, the little skier had to go through a lot. On many of my first attempts, I mashed at the controls, praying for a positive outcome. In response, my digital friend would flop about frantically before ending up in a twisted, crumpled heap at the bottom of the jump, over and over.
The experience, which took place entirely on my laptop screen, mirrored memories from my life—the real one. For instance, I remembered the scary, iterative processes of learning to drop a cliff or do a backflip on skis. Jibbers, a hard-as-nails but endlessly gratifying new freestyle skiing simulator, lit up those same neurons. When I stuck that first 360 in the game, it felt almost as good as actually doing one.
Turns out, the game’s origin story also revolves around trial and error, but not the human kind.
It started as Leander Edler-Golla’s master’s thesis at Austria’s Salzburg University of Applied Sciences. A lifelong skier and game developer who grew up in Germany, Edler-Golla caught the freestyle bug in his late teens, consuming a steady diet of Capeesh and SLVSH videos (he cited the SLVSH match-up between Magnus Graner and Ethan Swadburg as his favorite). Edler-Golla understandably wanted the thesis to involve his passion for the mountains.
So, he began building an intricate skiing simulator with a very science fiction goal: he planned to see if he could teach artificial intelligence agents to ski. Other similar efforts in the world of AI, like people training bots to box or park cars, inspired him.
But as the project progressed, Edler-Golla said he realized that the simulator he’d created was “super, super fun” to toy around with. He decided to pivot last fall, moving away from research towards game design, calling the prototype Jibbers. AI wasn’t going to be learning tricks; we were.
Jibbers
While skiing’s been recreated in video game form over the years—and some of those video games are quite fun—none have perfectly nailed freestyle’s physicality or complexity.
SSX on Tour went with arcade absurdism. Steep, meanwhile, had beautiful graphics and huge peaks but imprecise freestyle controls. While Shredsauce, a cult classic browser game, is beloved, it was released back in 2012. At the very least, it was time for a new take.
Edler-Golla and others are trying to fill the void. Alongside Jibbers, there are two more upstarts worth keeping your eye on, B-Dog: Bark n’ Butter and JIB. They’re all doing what big studios probably won’t: making a game tailored to members of a small community who can fondly remember a SLVSH game that released almost a decade ago.
“It’s not a safe business option,” said Edler-Golla. “This is where we, as indie game developers, have to come in and try some more experimental stuff.”
Jibbers isn’t Edler-Golla’s first attempt at finding the ideal formula. On his computer, he said, there are several folders with ski projects, but he was never satisfied with them. With Jibbers, though, he thinks he finally figured out what he was shooting for. He didn’t want to press a button and have his avatar easily do a pre-animated trick.
“It just feels so much better if you actually feel like you’re in control while you’re doing it,” he said. “You think: ‘I just did that, I wanted to throw this trick, and then tweak out the grab in the end.’”
Months into the development process, he still can’t get enough of what he created.
“I have to get a couple of hits in every day, just ride a couple of lines,” Edler-Golla said, noting that normally, when you’re working on games, you get sick of them quickly.
Jibbers
Edler-Golla’s commitment to precision and control comes with a steep learning curve. In Jibbers, you can move each leg independently. The same goes for the avatar’s upper and lower body, which can twist in any direction. Pushing up and down on the left stick presses the skis into a butter. Add in grabs and other moves, including a screamin’ seaman, and it’s easy to get paralyzed by all the possibilities. I only found success after trying, failing, and trying again. Oftentimes, that meant panicking at the lip of a jump before lawn-darting into the snow.
There are some planned and current workarounds to the challenge. As of now, you can fine-tune the physics settings, making for a more straightforward ride. In the final version of the game, Edler-Golla said there will be a “very easy” mode, where the skier will gravitate towards landing upright.
But those already playing Jibbers don’t seem to have a problem with it being tough. Edler-Golla told me that, early in the game’s development, he asked fans on the platform Discord how difficult they wanted Jibbers to be. Their answer?
“Somewhere between hard and insane,” he said.
And then there’s the overwhelmingly positive response to the game. Earlier this year, Edler-Golla launched a Patreon for Jibbers, which grew to around 6,000 subscribers and now brings in more than $10,000 a month. While Edler-Golla started working on Jibbers alone, he’s since hired help, building a five-person team. Three, including himself, are working on it full time. The other two are part-time. Clearly, he’d struck a chord.
“I didn’t expect it to be this amazing,” he said, adding that he felt relieved. “I always had this kind of thought in the back of my mind that it’s only me that is enjoying this kind of game.”
Looking ahead, Edler-Golla and the team are working on improving the graphics of Jibbers, adding powder snow, and multiplayer.
For Edler-Golla, one key design pillar is customizability. Players can already add personalized poses and grabs in the game, but he wants to include customizable ski clothes and character faces. He’s also thinking of plans for an in-game mountain editor and, before that, an object dropper so players can place jumps and rails on existing terrain. One day, Jibbers might have cameos from pro skiers.
“I want to be able to call it a ski sandbox,” Edler-Golla said. “Just fully customizable on every aspect of the game, so that you can have whatever kind of ski session you want.”
To try Jibbers now, you can sign up for the game’s playtest on Patreon, which starts at $7.50 a month. Edler-Golla hasn’t decided on an official release date for Steam—the Mac and PC game marketplace—yet, but expects it’ll be sometime before next ski season. He hopes to bring Jibbers to video game consoles eventually.
Related: The Swiss Chalet That Fostered The Ski Bum Freeride Revolution
