Ski Jump

Ski Jump is a side-on ski jumping game about four moments. On the in-run you hold the button to stay tucked, which keeps the speed up but slowly eats your balance, so you have to sit up once and settle before the table. At the edge you let go: within a metre and a half of the lip is a perfect take-off, and everything earlier or later costs you height and speed. In the air you hold to fold forward into the V and release to come back, hunting the narrow band where the skis carry best. As the hill comes up you tap once for the telemark; late gives you a two-footed landing and fewer style points, and very late puts you down on your back.

Four hills are built from real ski jumping geometry: Pinewood is a small hill with a K point at 68 metres, Silverhorn is the championship normal hill at K 95, Storfjell is a large hill where you leave the table at nearly a hundred kilometres an hour, and Vindheim is a flying hill where the flight lasts seven seconds and the slope is still running away underneath you. Each one can be played in bright day, floodlit dusk or heavy snowfall, and each remembers your longest jump on a red marker painted into the snow.

The scoreboard is the sport's own. Distance points start at sixty at the K point and move by the metre, five judges hand in style cards and the best and worst are struck out, and the wind and the start gate are compensated on the broadcast strip so a lucky headwind never wins a round on its own. Jump once, take on nine rivals over two rounds with a full standings table, work through a career of twelve competitions that opens the bigger hills, or pass the phone around for two to four players. Replays run from the hill camera, touch and keyboard both work, P pauses and M mutes.