Without further delay here is what you all have been itching for - a new release including new content, features and a lot of optimizations and bugfixes.

Play The Free Prototype Now!

Or Watch The Trailer!

Enjoy!

/REEP

Our last prototype got international recognition. The French media group Yellow Media SAS and their web television channel "Canal Jeux Vidéo" wanted to promote Snow Hard to their readers and viewers. So after intensive and creative polishing, we didn't just improve every aspect of the game but also ended up with a French speaking version of the game!

Other notable changes in this prototype:

- We invented a new way of making smoke effects in 3D games that we have named UV-animatex.

- A stunning intro.

- Improved graphics.

- Ice crystals that shimmer in the snow.

- Moving clouds.

- New enemies.

- Enemy alert arrows that warns the player of enemies that are not in front of him/her.

- Intelligent shadows.

- Rag dolls

- And really a lot of other cool stuff...

Download Me!

IN MORE DETAIL:

Along these astonishment improvements we have a myriad of bugs fixed and features that too deserve recognition;

Completely new innovation, named UV-animatex, that allows the game to use graphical special-effects with little or no impact on performance.

An example is the chimney-smoke that is so beautiful it makes you wanna smoke again!

- New sky with clouds and gusts of wind, making you aware how time flies by...

- Optimization of the script-, and physics-engine.

- Rag-Doll-effect makes killing ever more amusing.

- Collisions with the world have never worked better.

- New character-controllers!

- Cinematic cut-scene introduce you to the story and mood of the game before even had a chance to throw your first snowball.

- A variety of shaders making the game more dynamic, alive and dramatic.

- A health-screen that flashes upon taking damage as well as gradually freeze over with snow and ice which slowly melts away should you avoid further damage.

- Death have never been more sad.

- New game-controls are easier to use and displayed as part of an in-game tutorial, providing you with valuable information as you go along.

- The game has become more of a challenge.

- New enemies forcing you to take cover and alter your tactics.

- Oh-Bot troopers who threaten to swarm your snow castle and tear it down, peice-by-piece.

- Oh-Shit-Bot, far smarter than his fellow comrades – he will find you wherever you are.

- Oh-No-Bot, freaks of nature that throw snowballs, larger than cars, in your direction!

- Your friend that never talks, The Castle, needs to be protected or else the enemies will destroy it.

- Mana is now more challenging to acquire but heavenly awarding to use.

- Light-maps and shaders create a gorgeous environment filled with moonlit snow and shadows so god-like you will have a hard time living in a world without them.

- A new set of features will help you wage snowball-war.

- A catapult will provide support-fire to make the Oh-Bots pay for every inch in blood as they make their way towards the castle.

- The sprinting-ability lets you cover great distances at the expense of drained mana.

- Snowballs are now more accurate in timing and distance.

- Warning-arrows informs you of the position of your enemies.

- High-score system is now local and more true to your single player-experience.

- Most notably, every letter is now in French.

With this release we show the world what talent and commitment we have among our ranks. Putting the pieces together that have been under way for months into a tasteful balance, like a mad watchmaker adding components into a machinery of awe. M5 is the pearly gate to the world of Snow Hard. Welcome!

Discover:

- Breathtaking environments

- New character (Claire!) and new enemies (Oh-bots!)

- Instinctive AI-behavior that makes use of the enviroment

- A challenging mana-system

- Better throwing system

- Collision and physics that would make Aristotle put on his churchgoing clothes in his grave, and dance.

- Inspiring HUD

- New animation and animation system.

Be inspired, be amazed and be Snow Harden...

Download Me!

MORE DETAILED INFO:

First and foremost; a myriad of improvements have been made to make gameplay easier, faster, smoother and in general alot more enjoyable. In short, Snow Hard has been dramatically optimized and now look alot more like a a true game. In this enterprise, some features are so intriguing that they deserve special aknowledgement.

Features: Realistic behaviour and activity from enemies as they gang up, dive for cover, crouch, help each other and single out the most potent threat visible to them. The overall goal for the enemy is to take the castle, likewise your allies goal is to help you defend it.

Fancy-targeting has given way to greater gamer-controll and manual aiming. Gamers can, and need to, develop skills to take on the new intelligent enemy with both accuracy and speed. As everything moves faster the battles become more fierce and intense, only the most determined warrior will survive this maelstrom of upgraded enemies.

New types of enemies will make your fighting alot more complicated; ordinary oh-bots make up the brunt of the enemies forces, ”oh-oh”-bots will prove a harder nut to crack than the average foot soldier while the kamikaze-bots try to break your lines with their furious close combat-attacks.

Revision of the system which allows greater flexibility for tweaks and attributes of the enemies and allies; targetting, throwstrenght, throwaccuracy and movement speed.

New level wherein the graphical model, though it will get alot prettier, finally has been defined.

"Mana”-system is used to activate special attacks such as clusterball, seekball and ”ball”-time. It refills, like health, over time but can be boosted by the ”mana” dropped by fallen enemies.

Feedback-system for arcade-like highscore, registred after you´ve finished playing, showing how great a snowballwarrior you really are...you got to earn respect.

Feedback-system for loss of health showing the HUD freezing over as you become ever more damaged and cold.

Since picking snowballs before, during and even after battle has proven to be rather tiresome and boring, ammo has been set to infinite. Your going to need it.

Better collisionsbodies makes collision seem alot more naturalistic. Characters are now aware of their environment which helps them follow the laws of physics.

Sprinting enables you to cover distances at great speed but without the ability to return fire.

Crouching makes you alot harder to hit for your enemies.

Much like other recent third person action games, Snow Hard now features a cover-system. You can make use of cover to get an tactical advantage over your foes, but of course the AI will do the same to you.

Action-combos may be boldly unravelled and explored at the leisure of the seasoned gamer.

New GUI especiallly concering the choice of weapons which now are being displayed within the mystical Diary of Claires mother.

A journal-system that records the gaming-session helps us to quickly discover bugs and errors in the gameplay. Thus, the possibilities for future improvements have radically grown.

Thus we can conclude that REEP contitnues to give the world what it badly needs – an even better Snow Hard, widening the horizons of the gaming world, stretching the limits of what is possible to conduct on a computer.

Sincerely /REEP

At long last, after have showed our mettle to the SGA-jury in STHLM and committed some critical working-hours days before, the M4 prototype is about to be released to our fans worldwide.

Features are;

• A new revolutionary aiming-system which compensates for the snowballs ballistics, just aim at the bad guys and fire. If they try to strafe; hold down the mousebutton and drag to where you believe them to move.
• Improved AI-system; Enemies react to your actions and friends learn from your own behaviour.
• Upgraded "bullet-time" which allows you to precise more intricate attack-series to bring your enemies down, all of them.
• New level which allows you to test the gameplay of snow hard and, if your skilled enough, complete the game by getting to the other side of the level. Make no mistake, this level would be hard for a mother to call pretty but, she works.
• Intimate camera, allowing you to follow your snow-combatant from over the should or close in on the action.
• The much awaited crouch-mode for all our rogue, and assasin-gamers out there.
• Hardcore HUD with Reload-time to cooldown fire and Cross-air heghtening accuracy.
• Smooth and solid physics preveting kids from penetrating matter.
• Optimized rendering helping the game to flow even smoother than before.
• Configuration-window to help players adapt Snow Hard to their own systems.

Download a new Snow Hard!

Here is at long last the wished for update of Snow Hard! Many things have changed since last, all for the better of course. A great prototype has gotten even better.

New and improved things:

• Cutting-edge collision detector which enables you to aim like a god
• Inspiring swinging music by Tobias Wedin which gives you a hint of the over all feeling of the game.
  • Adding to this are new dynamic sound-effects.
• New graphic style resembling that of an Urban fairytale, Wallace & Gromit and Junk-Nisse.
• We have just scratched the surface on our new heads-up display.
• Room-time distortion which gives you a visible effect of Einsteins talk about the bending of time and space.
• A network- intelligence for smart decisions among enemies and allies alike.
  • Give orders to your friends and use tactics to outwit your opponent
• Two easter eggs, one of which enables you to see the matrix behind the code...more about the other one for the next release.
• Amazing dodge-ability daring the laws of physics.
• Special-attacks now better enabled.
  • Seek-ball which lets you hit your enemies with great accuracy and devastation.
  • A proximity mine resembling an innocuous snow-lantern.
  • Enhanced cluster-ball.
• Snow Cannons potent enough to blow cities to pieces.
• Superlunar-madness-postfilter-effects which takes your screen to another dimension.
• Mystical blizzards ravaging across the country-side.
• Massive explosions from every little thing you do!

Download It Now Or Die!

^{[Only for Windows yet]}

Furthermore the evergrowing REEP-team which now consists of 30 developers. New faces in the crowd we wish to welcome are:

Johan Fredriksson, concept art
Jonas Svensson, particel-, and 3d-artist
Tobias Wedin, soundtrack
David Piuva, optimization-coder
Niklas Ramquist, gameplay-coder
Christian Axelsson, gameplay-coder
Josef Cullhed, physics-coder
Lars Liljenberg, level-coder
Fredrik Falk-Lundgren, gameplay-designer

You really put the R in REEP.

Dear Gamer!

The coming of the second generation of the Snow Hard-prototype is at long last here. Our gamers and fans around the world will see some big changes from the last version. Main new features now are:

• Richer level featuring a brand-new snowcastle, a breath-taking sky, and more
• Bullet-time snowball-throwing which gives you tremendous leverage over your opponents
• Clustersnowball that allows you to hit more than one opponent in a single attack
• Brutal melee attack which makes snow-war a very, very personal thing
• Amazingly conducted music which create the right emotion
• HUD which shows the hardcore player's health, ammo, and score
• Smarter AI for that near-life experience
• Unspeakable amounts of improvments and optimizations under the hood

We humbly thank the Swedish winter and its endless supply of white, dry snow for the inspiration and joy of making this game become a realistic and enjoyable experience for all our players. Convinced that Snow Hard will strike you with awe, endanger your social life, keep you up at night and in general help you maintain a more meaningful life we from REEP hope your year 2009 will be a good one, filled with hours upon hours of snowballwar-gaming.

Grab your copy right now!

(Only for Windows yet)

Sincerely and with the best regards
/REEP - Really Evil Empire Productions

Try our latest prototype now.

Recommended System Requirements:

• Microsoft Windows XP or Vista
• Intel CPU 2.8 GHz (or AMD equivalent) or faster
• 1 GB of RAM or more
• NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS (or ATI equivalent) or greater
• 100 MB Harddisk space or more

Are you a REEP developer? Check out the latest development version.