Portugues
Les Aiguilles Blanches
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About the game
You have just been hired as the night-shift snow groomer at Les Aiguilles Blanches, a made-up ski resort in the French Alps, and your job is to have every piste ready before the first skier arrives in the morning. You drive a tracked machine with a blade at the front and a tiller at the back: hold the groom button while you drive and the snow behind you turns into smooth corduroy. Cover enough of the slope before the clock runs out and the run is yours.
It starts gently, in a ski school, and goes on through ten more runs on a trail map: green and blue beginner slopes, a terrain park with kickers and rails that you must groom around without touching, a half-pipe where you groom lengthwise like the real thing, steep red and black pistes where you attach the winch to an anchor post so you do not slide off, a night run lit only by the machine's headlights, an avalanche-risk zone, a recovery after a snowstorm, and a final competition run across the whole mountain. Fuel, stamina and, on cold levels, frost are all running down while you work, so you refuel at the station, and you stop at the mountain restaurant for a hot meal that restores you and gives a short bonus.
The game has a lot of heart. The crew (the veteran Jean-Pierre, Thierry, Émilie and Marie) comments on your work, and not always kindly when you roll the machine, run out of fuel or take too long. Marmots, chamois and little birds wander the slopes and run away when you approach. After a run you can ski or snowboard down it yourself, with tricks, over the corduroy you just made, and once you have completed all the runs, Daily Runs opens up with generated pistes, including a Daily Shift that is the same for everyone on a given day.
The look is retro pixel art, drawn entirely by the game's own code, and so is the sound: the piano music, the engine, the weather and the voices are synthesised in your browser. The game speaks 14 languages, has colourblind and high-contrast modes and rebindable keys. Its author says it was built almost entirely through conversation with an AI assistant, GitHub Copilot, from the design and pixel art to the code, sound and tests.
Playing it here
Click Play, then Start Game: the ski school teaches the controls, and from then on the Trail Map on the main menu lets you pick any run you have unlocked and aim for three stars. Your progress, stars and settings are saved in this browser only. The game starts in English unless your browser is set to one of its 14 languages; you can change it in Settings.
Controls
| Input | Action |
|---|---|
| WASD or arrow keys | drive the groomer |
| Space | groom the snow (hold while driving) |
| Shift | winch, when near a numbered anchor post |
| Esc or P | pause |
| N | skip the run (shown on screen) |
| Touch screen | virtual stick on the left; groom and winch buttons on the right |
| Gamepad | left stick or D-pad to drive, A to groom, LB to winch, Start to pause |
All the keys can be rebound in Settings.
A few things worth knowing
Steady beats fast. Grooming quality depends on smooth, committed passes, and it is best along the fall line, up and down the slope. Zigzagging gives rough snow.
Plan your fuel. Driving burns diesel, and an empty tank ends the run. The fuel station is at the bottom of each level, and the restaurant near the top restores stamina.
Use the winch on the steep parts. On slopes of about 30 degrees and more the machine slides, and past 40 it tumbles. Attach the winch to an anchor post, and mind the cable: it can snap.
Credits and licence
Les Aiguilles Blanches is by Antoine Cellerier and contributors and is released under the MIT licence. It uses the Phaser game framework and the Rex UI plugins for it (both MIT). The game draws all its graphics and generates all its sound in code, and the people, the resort and the dishes in it are fictional. For this site it is the same game as the author published it, with these changes: the links to the author's page, the update check and the offline-install feature were removed, so the game only talks to this site; the game starts in English instead of French when your browser language is not one of its own; and a machine maker's trade name and a mention of another game were taken out of the jokes and the credits. The licence texts are in the licence file of this page.
FAQ
Is it a realistic grooming simulator? It borrows real ideas (tiller, blade, winch, grooming along the fall line, nightly ski-resort routines), but it is an arcade game about the job, not training material.
Can I play it on a phone? Yes, it has touch controls that appear when you touch the screen, and it also works with keyboards and gamepads.
What is a Daily Run? A generated piste you unlock after completing all the runs. The Daily Shift is the same for everyone on a given day, so you can compare how you did with a friend.