While hockey is a popular sport, especially in Canada, there aren’t many video games that actually feature ice skating as a central mechanic. The most prominent example, of course, would be EA Vancouver’s NHL games, but even then, they’re relegated to the rigid framework of playing hockey within a rink.
That’s part of what makes North Shore so notable. The debut title from Toronto-based Ravine Studios is a top-down skating game, putting players in the shoes of a child who explores the mysterious and beautiful titular expanse that’s based on Southern Ontario and Quebec landscapes.
It’s an intriguing premise for a game, and it’s one that draws heavy inspiration from the Ontario upbringing of Ravine co-founder Nick Counter.
“I started skating when I was, like, three years old, but it was always on ponds and then also [in] hockey rinks,” says Counter, who grew up in various parts of the province due to having family in both the Lake Huron and Rideau Lakes areas. “I continued to skate forever, and then just spent time in spaces in nature, skating in nature.”
But it wasn’t until he studied illustration at OCAD where he realized he wanted to do something artistic that channelled his lifelong love of hockey and video games. And after meeting programmer Dante Camarena at a tech company several years ago and working on a game called Little Learning Machines, they would eventually decide to branch out and make something of their own together.
“We wanted another shot at trying to make something [to make] the player feel and have this particular experience, and we want to do it with integrity from beginning to the end,” says Camarena. “And with that in mind, that’s how we ended up starting the studio.”
As they looked through Counter’s old sketchbooks, they both liked a concept that he’d had for a battle royale game involving skating and hockey sticks. But as they played around with the actual mechanics of skating, they decided they could do something more unique by pivoting to a more exploration-centric gameplay loop that drew from Counter’s experiences in the Canadian wilderness.
The Backdrop and prints at the booth were made by @seanislewis.bsky.social.
— North Shore – Ravine Studios (@ravinestudios.ca) January 15, 2026 at 4:38 PM
“I’ve always been interested in skating, because when you’re on the ice, especially at night in these different places out of the city into the Canadian Shield — unless you’re a boater, which a lot of people aren’t — you don’t see the landscape from this perspective,” says Counter. “We went with a top-down perspective for different reasons, but just seeing this kind of space that is normally inaccessible with speed is cool, because it’s like a secret place with speed and confidence.”
Counter says the top-down view also affords the game some novel presentational elements.
“This space allows for so much because we can deal with ice reflections. If it’s perfectly reflective, you can be skating the clouds, basically. If it’s rough, then it’s distorted. You also have the texture of the ice, and then you have the transparency of the ice,” he says. “So because of this perspective, you can see everything below, potentially, if we allow you to, and then everything above, so you actually are collapsing the height into a single layer, which was a big inspiration for us early on.”
Through that POV, Ravine is pulling inspiration from many of the pieces of Canadian artwork that Counter saw as an OCAD student while visiting the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO). In particular, he says he was in awe over the “spiritual” quality of Indigenous art and the works of artists like the Group of Seven and Cornelius Krieghoff. “I just want to be in that space all the time, and so I made this game so I can be out there more,” he says.
He also credits a teacher while he was at OCAD, the Toronto-born, London, England-based painter Stephen Appleby-Barr, for creating what he likens to “Canadiana Dungeons & Dragons” that really spoke to his nerdier interests. “Seeing fantasy, which I love so much, and Canadiana, merged into these literally 10-foot tall oil paintings that are beautiful — that was the first big influence.”
These artistic influences, plus his experiences exploring Canadian nature, ultimately shaped what Counter wanted to capture in North Shore.
“Coming from a nerdy game childhood, minimalism is important in games. It’s actually a rendering style. And the work’s already kind of been done, and it’s culturally relevant,” says Counter. “I love it so much. We see the Canadian landscape painted at the AGO and at the National Gallery and stuff. But I don’t know how many games — there’s a few of them — that capture that in the same kind of way.”
The good old skating game
But of course, it’s not enough to just have a pretty, painterly game — you want it to actually be entertaining to play. Interestingly enough, Counter says one of the early inspirations for the “fun” of North Shore came from a perhaps unexpected source: Mario Kart.
“I used to work at a studio before [Dante and I] met, where every night after we worked, we played Mario Kart, and we became really good — like pros, basically,” he says with a laugh. “And when it came up to the idea of [North Shore], we wanted to make something fast and reactive.”
From there, Camarena would record Counter skating at the Mattamy Athletic Centre (MAC) in Toronto to better understand the physics of his individual movements, on top of studying skating footage from other professional references. “I didn’t know what crossovers are!” admits Camarena, referring to the stroking technique for gaining speed while going in a curve or circle.
“If you’ve seen the Olympics recently, so much of the routines are just managing weight, so we were like, ‘Should we control that?’ There’s a certain level of complexity you can manage, and I could see the complexities in it,” he says.
“Right now in the demo people have been playing [at events like GDC], there’s a button that lets you turn backwards, and all of a sudden you’re skating backwards, and then you can turn forwards […] But then, you tap the button, you start spinning, and then the direction you spin depends on which way you’re facing or which way you’re turning. So it all turns into this kind of fluid dance that is weird for an adventure game.”
Ultimately, he realized that it was important not to just focus on forward momentum. “It’s not like a car where you’re going forward, or walking, which just feels like going forward. Skating has this kick to it, so in the demo, every time you press A, you kick. But then, if you hold A, you keep your foot up,” he says.
“Controlling your acceleration with a single button was the early revelation,” adds Counter.
But carefree skating isn’t the only part of North Shore. The game’s official description mentions “scenes of natural beauty and danger,” which Camarena breaks down to feelings of roughly “80 per cent cozy, 20 per cent horror.” Towards the end of the trailer, you can get a glimpse at that as the player must fend off mysterious enemies with a hunting rifle. This feeds into a larger story that Ravine isn’t quite ready to talk about. But the overarching idea behind it all, Camarena explains, comes from an “absolutely terrifying painting” that he found while looking through Counter’s portfolio.
“It speaks to some of these stories that [Nick’s] been telling about being out in the woods, and playing with your friends, and they’re playing with sticks, maybe swords or whatever, and one kid points the stick at the other kid, and ‘Bam!’ And then the painting itself shows the other kid on the ground. There are things we do as kids that are dark,” says Camarena.
He likens this to biking around in the streets of Mexico as a boy.
“I think that’s a universal experience; when you’re a kid, the world feels safe, and there are places you explore, and all of a sudden, things shift as an adult. All the places you were left alone in as a kid are very scary,” he says. “And not only that, the way you and your friends maybe played during that time — was that really that safe? The environments you were in — were they really that safe?” he says.
The goal, Camarena notes, was to explore the “inherent brutality” behind the world.
“There’s a deep darkness in the Canadian space that’s very unique. It’s not just the darkness of nature, but there’s a history of the way that this space has been developed over the years,” he says. “And part of that is a very human darkness. And being able to touch on some of that is very important. There’s difficulty there, but we’re trying to hit it in the right way.”
North Shore doesn’t yet have a release date, but you can wishlist the game on Steam.
Image credit: North Shore
