SkiFree: The Complete Guide to the Windows Game With the Yeti

There's a moment every SkiFree player remembers. The slope is calm. You've dodged a dozen trees, hit a jump, maybe flattened a little dog. The distance counter ticks past 1,800 metres, then 1,900. You're feeling good.

Then, at the edge of the screen, something big and white starts running.

You didn't know it was coming the first time. Nobody told you. And when the Yeti caught you, lifted your skier up and swallowed him whole, you sat there staring at the screen with your mouth open.

Then you pressed restart. Of course you did.

This is our hub for everything SkiFree. Start here, and follow whichever path you like.

What is SkiFree?

SkiFree is a simple skiing game for Windows, made by Chris Pirih at Microsoft and released in 1991 as part of Microsoft Entertainment Pack 3. You look down on a white slope from above and steer a little skier around trees, rocks, moguls and other skiers.

It was small, silly and charming. It ran on the family computer, the office computer and the school computer. And it hid one of the most famous surprises in gaming. We go into the full backstory in SkiFree's history and Chris Pirih.

The controls

You can steer with the arrow keys or the mouse. Down points you straight downhill. Left and right turn you through a handful of angles. Point fully sideways and you stop. A few extra keys hide tricks:

• F — go fast
• Jumps and moguls — launch you into the air for style points
• Restart — because you'll need it

The full list, including how to do tricks in the air, is in SkiFree controls and tricks.

The courses

At the top of the hill you could pick one of three courses: slalom, tree slalom, or freestyle, full of jumps. Or you could ignore them all and just ski down the open slope, which is where the Yeti lives. Each one is explained in SkiFree courses explained.

The Yeti

Ski far enough down the free slope — about 2,000 metres — and the Abominable Snow Monster comes for you. He's faster than you skiing normally. If he catches you, that's the end of the run.

Why is he there? What exactly is he? We dig in properly in the SkiFree Yeti explained.

Can you escape?

Yes, sort of. This is the question everyone asks. The short answer: press F to go fast, and you can pull away from him. The long answer, with every trick people have tried, is in how to escape the Yeti in SkiFree.

The other games in the pack

SkiFree didn't come alone. It shipped in a pack of small games for Windows, the same era that gave us Minesweeper and a whole box of distractions. Wander through them in the Windows 3.1 games we grew up with.

Why it stuck with us

For a lot of people SkiFree was their first scare from a computer, and their first real computer game. We wrote about what it felt like in SkiFree and the family computer.

Play SkiFree now

Our SkiFree is rebuilt to look and move like the Windows original: the same chunky pixel skier, the same trees and jumps, the same speed that builds as you point downhill, and the same Yeti waiting at 2,000 metres.

Point your skis downhill. Watch the counter. And when you see something white moving at the edge of the screen — press F.