Steep open beta free to try now

Ubisoft's extreme-getting-down-a-mountain game Steep releases soon, but if you're interested in trying it out early you can enter the open beta right now. Doing that is as simple as firing up Steam and clicking on the big 'Install Game' button here, at which point you'll be able to dive into something that Steam reviewers currently have "mixed" opinions about.

My experience of snowboarding consists of the original Cool Boarders, and that minigame in Final Fantasy VII, so if Steep is a bit like that (while offering skiing, paragliding and wingsuiting too) I'll be in my element.

This open beta appears to end on November 21, but if you miss it there's only a short wait before we can hit the slopes for real, by which I mean for pretend because this is a game and not real life. Steep is out on December 2, and there's a slope-load of footage available below.

Tom Sykes

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.