Sledders Game: Everything You Need to Know About the New Backcountry Snowmobiling Game

All right, welcome back to another Sledder Cast podcast episode. We're doing things a little bit differently today. We've got some guests from around the world, and we're hoping the internet and Wi-Fi and everything works for us and we don't have any technical difficulties. That stuff's out of our control, but we're pumped. I've got the crew from the Sledders game on with us, and we've got some cool things to announce and some cool things to talk about.

I'm sure most of you have seen the TikToks or the Instagram reels of people playing the new backcountry snowmobiling game and wondered what the hype is all about and what's actually going on with it. We've been in communication with these guys for, man, I don't know, four or five months probably, and we're excited to announce some cool stuff with Sledders. But why don't we get a brief introduction. I've got Sami and Niko. Sami, why don't you give us a brief introduction as far as who you are, where you're at and what you do there at Sledders.

Absolutely. Hey, greetings from the Arctic, Finland here. It's not the most snowmobile paradise at the moment, because it's been raining for almost two weeks here. But I'm here from Lapland, and I'm representing the sales department of Sledders. I'm with the video game's publisher. I'm not making the game, but I'm trying to make it possible for Niko and his talented crew to make the game as great as possible. Happy to be here.

Awesome, thank you, Sami. So Sami, you're on the sales side of things, sales and marketing, and pumping Niko full of ideas and feedback from the market as far as what to build. So Niko, tell us a little bit about yourself and what you're doing there at Sledders.

I'm Niko Autio, and I'm currently the lead developer of Sledders. I can say that I started the project. Nowadays I think I use most of my time on the technical side, solving different kinds of physics problems, and I'm also quite deep in the game engine and stuff. I try to keep as far away from the business side as possible.

So Niko, you're the engineer of the game, kind of the mastermind behind the technical side of how the game works. Are you the only engineer on the project, or are there a few other engineers there working with you?

In some degree, yes. I think I'm the, if you want to use that term, engineer. The rest of the team are more or less generalists or leaning to the art side. So we have one very art-oriented developer, then we have one middle guy who is very much a generalist and does everything, and I'm on the technical side. So that's the development team at the moment.

Nice. So I forgot the city that you guys are from. You're in different cities right now, but what are the two cities again?

I'm from Kuopio. It's a little bit south, and a little bit southeast, from where Sami is coming from.

Both in Finland?

Yes.

Yeah, I'm here up north.

Finnish guys. Nice.

As far as the idea, I think I first saw Sledders popping up on Instagram and TikTok, man, it probably would have been late summer, early fall of 2023. How long have you guys been working on this project? When did it start?

I think it started in fall 2020. And as far as I know, it first appeared on TikTok very late in '23, so that's when it leaked out, so to speak.

So basically three years in the works behind the scenes, you guys are cranking on this project, and then we start seeing it in public in the fall of 2023. That's cool. I know you guys are from Finland, and there's snowmobiling there. Where did the idea come from, as far as, hey, we should create a snowmobiling, backcountry style game?

I am quite a long-term snowmobiler, and I think I was just very amused by how interesting it is, the way a snowmobile actually moves on snow. I have made some experimental driving simulators before, nothing to publish, just to test how these things usually work. But I never saw any reason to push those forward, because the market is so full of them, and the existing sim car games are so high quality. There is no sense in making yet another indie one.

And also, it's quite a solved problem. If you look on the internet, you can find how it's done, and it's mostly just learning from the others. I have always been quite interested in problems where there is no existing solution in a textbook. So I think that's the combination of it.

So basically it's like, hey, we're familiar with snowmobiling, we know how to program games, we don't want to go into the auto space with cars because there's lots of competition there and it's really hard to compete in that space. Let's go solve a problem in the snowmobiling space, where there's not really much of an option for gamers to jump in and get an idea of what backcountry snowmobiling is like from a gaming standpoint. And that's kind of where you guys started. Did I interpret that correctly?

Yeah, I think it's good to understand that Sledders definitely didn't start from the standpoint that it would be a commercial project. It started purely as a hobby, a personal project to see if it's possible to simulate snow. The commercialization came long after that, when it had been developed for quite a long time.

As far as getting the game to where it's at right now, and we'll go into how the gameplay currently is, and then we'll also chat about what the future of the game looks like, what's been the biggest challenge for you guys up to this point?

I think the physics. It is always the thing.

So Niko, when you say the physics, do you mean...

Constant battle on that hill. I don't know, it has been a two-year fight, and now we are building this hard surface model, which is more like a traditional car game simulation, and it's again the same, fighting with the physics. I think it's hard to say any single biggest battle on that ground.

So when you say physics, are you meaning giving someone an experience of what it's actually like snowmobiling? How the snowmobile moves in powder, how it turns? I've seen cool shots of tree riding, and so far, when you're watching, you guys have done a pretty decent job of creating almost a GoPro feel, like you're watching someone wearing a GoPro snowmobiling around some backcountry terrain.

Yeah, definitely. I think the feeling is very hard to get right. I have heard some criticism that, you don't know anything about snowmobiles because it acts like this and this and this. But even if you know what it should do, it's very hard to actually make it act like that, because the way things are is so indirect. We are not saying that when you push the throttle, we twist it somewhere, and if it's too much, we move it very manually. No. We simulate this thing in virtual volumetric snow, and it's all small interactions. The final way it actually feels to move in snow comes from these many little interactions.

So you cannot just say, tune it a little bit that way. It affects always everything, and there are so many parameters, and models are always imperfect, and so on.

Well yeah, it can be hard sometimes to get snowmobiles to perform the way you want them to in real life, so trying to mimic that in gameplay, I can imagine, is that much harder. As far as the gameplay goes, I don't know if Sami or...

Well, I'm going to say that I have never driven from one corner to another. I suck at hill climbing. I'm not really good at climbing the hills, so it's impossible for me to even reach all the corners of the map. So I would say the team has done really good work with the map. Is it like 6 kilometers by 6 kilometers, or is it even bigger nowadays?

Right now I think it's six by six.

Yeah, it's huge.

So six kilometers by six kilometers. Sami just said he hasn't even ventured across the entire landscape. That's what I thought was cool when you guys were telling me about this, how big the landscape was, and how we can go and explore the different features that are on the map.

As far as gameplay goes, single player, multiplayer, how does that interaction play out?

Of course, right now Sledders doesn't have much real gameplay, so to speak. It's all free ride, and multiplayer is just free ride with friends. The plan is that when we add some sort of single player career, we keep that multiplayer experience, so that you can cooperatively play that single player career with your friends. That's, I think, the biggest part.

And of course there will be some kind of competitive multiplayer things at some point, I hope, but there are no clear ideas yet about them or how to connect those experiences. Of course there are some obvious ones, like snocross or hill climbing, where there are quite good real world counterparts for those competitions.

Okay. So right now it's just backcountry free riding. Get the boys and girls, get the crew together, let's go explore some terrain, see if we can make some hill climbs, some nice lines, and just explore the map. And what you're saying is, looking into the future, we're looking at some single player and multiplayer challenges, competition, some snocross, some hill climb competition. Those types of things are potentially on the future road map to build out.

Yeah, it's good to understand that we are still developing quite fundamental things in the game, so there aren't too many details about those future plans yet. They're just on paper.

Yeah, we were actively developing the game just last year when Bonus Stage, the publisher side, my company, started working with Niko. It was doing well with Patreon, it had tens of thousands of players, but then the players started demanding more and more. People wanted, I want my friends to be able to play with me. So we kind of made Niko hurry up the development so we could release the game as it is at the moment, because it's a really good game at the moment, even if there are some challenges or some minor details to be ironed out.

We can still have the game out and let the community help us develop the game. Let them tell us, okay, we need exhausts in the game, we need tuning for the sleds in the game, we need more hills, we need everything people want in the game. So it's not just our company coming up with the ideas. We are bringing the game to the community, and the community is bringing themselves to us. That's the beautiful part of game development with this game especially.

And right now, for those who are familiar with Sledders, it's currently available on Steam, and that is going to stay that way until, fingers crossed, the end of this year, December 2024. That's kind of the goal, the target out there, right?

Yeah.

What's going to happen at that point? How are you guys going to roll this out?

Well, just today we started talking at the office, like, should we make a plan of what to do, actually, when we have promised that the game is coming out later this year. And there are a few people who have been asking when it's going to come to Xbox, when it's going to come to PlayStation and Nintendo Switch, and we are trying to get them out. And I know Niko is worried about our promises. Let's say, fingers crossed, the game is coming out this year.

As any good developer would be, right?

Absolutely.

Sami's out here making promises that Niko's got to go keep, and Niko's like, come on, Sami.

Yeah, but game development is far... We are bringing the game out on PC and consoles worldwide, making everybody who's interested in any kind of action or sports games enjoy snowmobiling, and making the field of snowmobilers even bigger.

Sami, what I thought was interesting, and I saw some backstory here, maybe we should have started with this. I started seeing Sledders pop up, and in my mind I was thinking, man, this is really cool, I need to look into this more. Being here with Deviant Ink, and the whole skins thing and people wanting to customize and trick out their machines, my brain's starting to think, man, how can we get involved here? And I just kept seeing you guys pop up. All of a sudden an email comes in from Sami, and he's from Sledders, and I'm thinking, what in the world is going on here? Long story short, you guys were at the powersports snowmobile show, right? In Finland?

Yeah, it's in Finland. It's only in Finnish, so the name is in Finnish, but I think it's Europe's biggest snowmobiling show.

So Europe's biggest snowmobile show. You guys are there, you're walking around, and you were explaining to me what happened. Would you mind retelling that?

Yeah. I don't remember which booth it was. I think it was some booth that was selling clothing and that kind of merch, and there was someone's sled, and it had these cool fluorescent neon wraps on it. And I was like, what the... that's cool. I want my future sled to look like something like that. It's going to shine, and it's going to be beautiful in my garage. And I was looking, oh, what's this company called? Deviant. Have they made this thing here?

I went through to your website and I was like, yes, I want them to sponsor us. And I had no clue what the cooperation would be, or how huge a company you are, or are you open for any kind of talks with a game. And you responded within like one day, like, yes, let's talk more.

Absolutely.

And it just started.

I was ready.

You were ready. And immediately when we talked, it was you and Mack there, and you realized that, okay, the guys at your workplace had been talking about the game. Like, how can we get in the game? Is there any kind of opportunity to partner up? So it was sweet synergy from the first moments, I think. And I think we are starting to wrap some sleds here at Sledders.

Yeah. So to recap this whole thing, we connect, we're shooting ideas back and forth, and we're pumped to partner with you guys and be the exclusive snowmobile wrap provider inside Sledders. Which means at some point over the next few months, working with you guys, we're going to make a handful of our wraps available, with the end goal in mind that when a user is in their shop, in their garage, customizing their snowmobile, they'll be able to treat that machine like they would on our own website, customizing the look of their machine.

So right now we're going through, okay, if we were to launch between one and five designs, which designs should we make available? If you're listening to this and you're on socials, drop us a comment and let us know. We have a pretty good idea what designs you're going to want to see, and we've seen some of them already in the game, with users uploading some of the designs. We've seen a lot of our Overcast design, which is what Muskoka Freerider used last year on all of his snowmobiles. That's a really popular design.

But we're super stoked to be working with you guys. It's so cool to just think, in real life this is what we do, but now there's an opportunity to spice up a game and provide users and players with different skins they can throw on.

Absolutely. And to mention shortly, my company Bonus Stage has released like 20 games before Sledders, but Sledders and the snowmobile community have been way over the top in the enthusiasm and the, let's say, positive craziness of what's happening. Everybody is so energetic and full of joy when they are playing the game, and in how they want to see the game develop for their needs and for their family. Dads are buying PCs for their kids so they can start playing the game already. So from Niko's 2021 idea, like, I want to be able to ride a snowmobile in summer as well, on PC, it has developed quite far. It has become a phenomenon.

Yep. And earlier in the podcast we were talking about 2020 when things kicked off, but really it was 2021. Niko corrected that off camera here. So it's been in the works for a few years.

I've shared this on the podcast before. Snowmobiling, snowmobilers, it's such a unique hobby and such a unique space, because almost every other hobby out there you can go and do throughout the year. You can drive a little ways and go golf, you can go ride dirt bikes. But in order to snowmobile you have to have one thing that's very important, and that's snow. And that only comes for three, four, five months of the year, depending on where you live, and then, boom, it gets taken away. So having a game like this, I think, is going to scratch that itch. It's going to provide that relief for those of us who want a little bit of snow in the summer and springtime. So really cool.

I know we've talked about the full release coming. Not a specific date, but end of 2024. If I'm new to Sledders, what are some of the things you guys can tell me now that are going to get me excited about that full release version?

Okay, at least one thing that I confirmed today. If you have played Sledders, there are things to complain about, and okay, there might be a lot of things, but one quite common one is the sounds.

Did you say the sounds?

Sounds, yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

And maybe the game as a complete thing. So we started working with the Swedish Pole Position on the engine sounds, and they have quite an impressive reference list. It contains many AAA car games. You can go to their site if you want to see specifics, but it's real, impressive, top-notch AAA games. So we are using their service to get some level-up to the engine sounds. They are actually maybe the only game audio company in the world who has recorded snowmobiles previously. So I think if they cannot handle us, then nobody can.

So you guys are working with an outside company to tone in the different sounds, which brings me to another question. Different sounds of different machines. I don't know if we can talk about names, but what brands are in there, or could possibly be in there right now? Are you guys shooting to have all of the manufacturers, or snowmobiles that look like certain types of snowmobiles?

That's a good question. We haven't put any official sleds or brands in the game yet. They have been invented from the head of Niko. What are the names of the sleds there? I don't remember. But we are in quite active talks with all the big manufacturers. Obviously we want the community to be able to play and ride with the gear that they have in real life and that they are fans of in real life. Like, we are working with Deviant Ink to bring your wraps into the game. We want exhausts in the game, we want handlebars, we want BRP backpacks in the game, we want BRP sleds in the game as well. We want Lynxes, we want Polarises, we want Ski-Doos, we want everything in the game, because the fans want them.

They want to ride what they ride in real life.

Yeah. And also see what's happening in the future for the sleds they love. For example, last week one manufacturer released their next year's lineup. It would be so cool to see those specs in the game. Instead of needing to go to a catalog or a reseller, you can go in the game and see, oh, this has this much horsepower and this kind of shocks. I can say for sure that we are bringing real world brands into the game, but I'm not able to disclose the names and schedules yet. But they are coming this year.

That's awesome. And I know you had mentioned the garage, or the shop, aspect of the game. I don't know how far in development that is yet, but it sounds like it's something that's on your guys' radar, as far as modding out your machine. Selecting this customization, this ski, a handlebar, an exhaust, a certain sound that I want my machine to sound like. Which is super cool, man, because it's what snowmobilers do in real life. They want to make a machine run the way they want it to run, sound the way they want it to sound, look the way they want it to look. So I think it's going to cross over so nicely for you guys.

Yeah, and this will be the long road. Okay, we are talking about the full release coming at the end of this year. But I think the realism is that because we are doing this with a small team, we are not an established studio, and we are learning on the way, at the end of the year we will have something much better than we have now, and hopefully it comes to the consoles and so on. But it's not going to be that, okay, at the beginning of '25 it's out and we start moving on to something else. No, I think we will stick with this project quite a long time, and it will be just one milestone on the way. So I think "full release" is a little bit, I don't know, many people like to use the term, but at least to me it's a little bit misleading.

It's just going to be one gate that we are opening, and then we are speeding up more, because we get to go to the consoles, and it's going to be a starting point for something new for the same game. It might be that we are doing Sledders 2, Sledders 3, Sledders 4, just like EA Sports is pushing out their NHL and FIFA games every year. Or it might be that Sledders is going to be a 15-year franchise that just keeps evolving with the community of players.

But what's for sure is that we are pushing limits quite heavily on what we can do. Deep snow, deep powder snow, is one thing, but making hard surface trails, roads, props like that, different kinds of trees, it's a lot of manual work. In development we have a team of three people, and in marketing we have four people, so there are more people in marketing than in development.

That's pretty crazy.

So it can take its time. It's going to be a lot of good quality Finnish Arctic handwork.

So a question that I have for you guys, and I don't think we even talked about this before, but just out of my own curiosity. If you guys wanted to build out maps for locations, let's call it Revelstoke, Colorado or Island Park, the areas that are popular where backcountry snowmobilers ride, how would you do that? Are you able to take advantage of something like Google Maps, where you can see terrain? Is there some way you can tap into that API, get an idea of how the terrain flows, and then recreate that in a game format? How would you go about doing that?

I think the techniques they use for, let's say, real life race tracks, for example, they're using laser scanning, and that's simply not feasible for multi square kilometer areas. This is all hypothetical, of course, but if you would start replicating a real location, the starting position would be some public map data. Usually you can get height data at a resolution of, I think, 10 meters. That's quite common, and you can get it globally, from anywhere. And I think that's a reasonable starting point.

But of course anybody can understand that if you have terrain where one height data point is 10 meters apart from another one, it won't be a very interesting or detailed experience. So on top of that, I think it's using different kinds of procedural methods to add some detail, using all the information you can get from other types of maps or pictures and so on, and combining procedural things with handwork and with the knowledge you can gather.

Yeah, it's like you spread a fabric or a cloth on a table, and then you just start pinching. Here's a mountain, you pinch the fabric higher. Then a smaller mountain, and you pinch the fabric. So it's quite like 3D modeling of the map. It's not that straightforward, but close to that. So the real world maps don't work that well. We just need to travel there first, I think.

You guys need to travel here too. Get your eyeballs on it and see what the terrain is like. And then hop on a snowmobile and see what that Rocky Mountain snow is all about.

Absolutely.

That's cool. Anything else, gentlemen? I think we've covered gameplay. Actually, one question I had about gameplay: what happens when you get stuck? I haven't played the game yet on Steam. If you get shot or killed in a game, you just go back to the starting point and start over again. Or do you have to work and get yourself unstuck?

Right now you can simply press a button and you respawn on top of the snow, so you can very easily keep going. There have been some ideas to tune that mechanism a little bit, to make it, you know, cost something to get stuck.

A negative to getting stuck, right?

Yeah, only slightly. But maybe a little bit more interesting, so that you can move the sled manually, so you can rotate where the nose is going and so on. So it's not only a disadvantage. You get a little bit more effort, but more power.

You're going to get these youngsters, these kids who grow up playing this game, and they think when I get stuck, I just push the button on my handlebar and I'm not stuck anymore. They're going to get out there in the real world and think, where the heck is my unstuck button on my sled? I actually got to work to get the sled unstuck.

We've been talking about a VR version. If we ever get a virtual reality version, you would have to start using a lot of your power to get the sled moving. Pin it and wiggle, get your sweat up, and then you need to have your shovel there and you just start shoveling in the game.

Yeah, I think that will be the hardcore mode.

Yeah. There are just so many things. And we've had multiple conversations outside of this podcast episode, but even just on here right now, I'm thinking how cool it would be to get some of these professional backcountry snowmobilers involved, saying, hey, I'm going to do a virtual ride day today on Sledders, who wants to join me? The first 30 people are in, and you get to put the headset on and go ride with so-and-so in the game. There are so many little things like that that I think are going to be super cool for you guys.

So let's do a final recap as far as the timeline of events here. I see it all the time in your guys' comments: hey, when are you going to do this, when's this going to be available? So maybe this will be a nice timeline of events. Not final, but a timeline. Right now the game is on Steam. Over the next spring and summer you're taking feedback from players that are playing on Steam to make small adjustments and minor tweaks, and this is all happening on the computer, Steam side of it, right?

Yes.

At the same time, you're working toward a future date that might be the end of the year, it might push into 2025, but the goal is to be on the different consoles and get out into those markets.

Yes, absolutely.

Is that pretty accurate as a general overview of what the timeline looks like?

Yes, absolutely. I'm not sure how many updates we are actually promising before the full big release, but I think right now we can promise that the next update, from the recording date, is coming in one month. So at the end of March there's going to be the next bigger update, with a lot of stuff. And the most updated list you can always see on our Discord server, where there are like 30,000 players all the time. I think we are trying to squeeze in one more update before the full release, so there's going to be lots of new content, and then we are pushing smaller updates, smaller bits, and merch in the game and the garage in the game between the updates.

So if someone wants to follow along with updates and be aware of what's going on with Sledders, what's the best way for them to do that? Is it through Discord, or is there somewhere else they should be tapping into to follow along with the progress of the game?

Discord is the best. It's sleddersgame.com, and you can find our Discord link there. I can send you the link later. And I think 25,000 to 30,000 people are there at the moment, from all over the world. Well, basically from the north, because not a lot of Egyptians are playing snow games at the moment. But let's change that in a year.

Nice. Well, cool. We end every podcast episode with the same two questions. I think I briefed you guys on this. I can't remember if I did. I think I did, though, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, the same two questions. If you have a new snowmobile, you only get three mods, and a wrap doesn't count. What are the three things you would want to do to that snowmobile to spice it up? And then the last question is, what's that unique thing that no one knows about you, that's interesting, that we're going to unveil here on the Sledder Cast podcast? We'll start with Sami.

Oh, I was worried that I'd need to start. Well, first of all, I need a sled at the moment. I don't have anything in the garage, and there's a spot for my sled. I'm quite interested in the Brutal that was released a week ago. That sounds interesting.

The Lynx, huh?

Yeah, it looks cool and it sounds cool. But the first things that I really need for mods are a saw, because the trees are magnets for me. And then I need a shovel, because...

There we go. A shovel.

I suck at snow. So those are the two bigger things. And of course then I'm going to say the GGB exhaust is going to be a good thing for me, so my friends know when I'm stuck. When there's nothing to hear from me anymore, they know to radio call me and say, hey Sami, do you want any help? So I think those are my mods at the moment, if the wrap doesn't count.

Nice. So we've got a saw, a shovel and a GGB exhaust. Two of those are new. The saw and the shovel, we haven't heard yet. So there we go. All right, Niko, what do you got for us?

I think I will always reinforce the bottom of the sled. Of course the standard bottom cover, but some additional covers on the bottom for the brake disc and chain.

So when you say the bottom of the sled, are you saying rail braces down around the track?

No. You know, the cover for the brake disc. If you look at the sled from underneath, there is...

Oh, yeah. Underneath the nose cone.

Yeah. There are some, let's say, vulnerable places, so I always cover them. There were some cases where I was riding with my friend, and both of us got those things slammed in. We slammed them back to the normal shape, and then on the next trip, the same thing. So after that we have always got some extra reinforcement there.

Then GPS. There was some long trip, and it was just awful for me. Most of it otherwise was cool, but the whole freaking day I was unlocking my phone and seeing where I am.

But other than that, I'm very much a stock snowmobiler, sadly. I think a snowmobile should be as unidentifiable as possible. Just right out of the box, as silent as possible. If somebody saw you somewhere where you shouldn't be driving, okay, was it that sled with the dragon wraps? No, no, no, it was just an ordinary Lynx, which is most of them here.

Cool. So you've got a few different things. GPS is nice, obviously. Most of the manufacturers are adding GPS componentry on the machine right from the factory, which is nice to have, of course.

Sami, so the next question is, what's that secret, man? What's that thing out of Finland? What's going on over there?

My secret, or Finland's secret? I think Finland's secret is the liquor here and the spirit of the Finnish people. Eurovision is not the biggest thing in the States, but we have this crazy thing called the Eurovision Song Contest, and we had this one guy last year who was taking over the world. And I think the enthusiasm that Finnish artists and all the Finnish creative people are bringing more and more into the world at the moment is helping us gain some momentum and get some speed going.

And my secret is that I'm all the time getting more and more proud of my home country. I'm brave enough right now to say that we are Sledders, we are coming from Finland to rule over the world, and our vision is to unite the world of sleds and bring more happiness and joy into the world.

That's awesome. And as far as your current conditions, because I know out here in the West, kind of a blanket statement, this winter has been kind of low as far as snow goes. How are the snow conditions for you guys in Finland this year? Has it been average, above average, below average?

I think, at least here, it has been the best year for a long time.

Really? Best year?

Yeah.

We are living a little bit... okay, is it not the same case there? Let's say that we don't have any snow anymore. I could show you, but it's pitch black outside. We had a lot of snow a week ago, but now everything has gone because it's been raining. It's been plus degrees Celsius and we pretty much don't have any snow anymore. And the same conditions are there in Swedish Lapland, which is the paradise of Finnish powder snowmobilers. It's just rain and everything is going away. But let's see, it gets better.

Yeah, I was talking about last week or the week before that. Up until this week, it was one of the best years ever.

Yeah, nice.

Okay, Niko, don't think you're getting out of this one. What's that secret that you've got for us?

Secret. I think a lot about, so to speak, long-term things, very long-term things, and it usually relates to space and stuff. I'm always so fascinated that the Moon has so many resources, and we can actually use it as our first base for building our space civilization.

And what are some other useful facts? There is the Andromeda Galaxy. I think it's colliding with us quite soon, and many people are saying that Earth is doomed by then, and so what. But I think it's very interesting that the solar system itself can have, as far as I know, habitable places at that point. And if interstellar traveling is a big challenge, it's good to notice that our local interstellar space can be quite different during and after that event.

Okay. So are you saying that there's life in other places as well?

No, I didn't say that.

I got scared.

I can tell you a good secret about Niko as well. You know that Finland is a part of NATO nowadays, and there is this big NATO training coming up here in Finland and Norway. And this guy is actually a snowmobile messenger in the Finnish Army, and he's going there to train with the NATO troops. So think about the dream job.

So wait, Niko is a snowmobile trainer for the Army within NATO? Is that what I heard?

No, no. You misheard it. I'm in sales, remember that.

Yeah, exactly.

But you are going to training next week, and it involves snowmobiles.

Yes. Of course I'm not a trainer, I'm training. But yeah, I'm a scout in the Finnish defense forces, and my part is to drive, using all these motorcycles, dirt bikes and snowmobiles.

Okay, that's awesome.

That's actually the first place where I learned about freeride snowmobiling. So that's how I got into this business.

Well, nice. We should have mentioned that at the beginning of this podcast. We just got that information from you right here at the end.

I was waiting for the secret.

Love it. All right, guys, once again, appreciate you hopping on. I know it's late for you guys, and there are time zones and tech, internet, Wi-Fi, sound, all sorts of stuff trying to mess up our podcast. But I appreciate you guys. Really stoked to see more and more people getting excited about it and posting about it. We're happy to be involved and help out in the growth of that, and we're excited to see what 2024 brings with Sledders. So yeah, thanks for tuning in.

Thank you, and we are happy to work with you.

We're going to be following along just like everyone else.

Yeah, absolutely. See you in Idaho or Sweden or wherever.

Yep. Awesome.

Yeah, thanks for having me.