I’ve long held a candle for the sport of Biathlon. Its mix of shooting and skiing is a strange concoction, but the endurance of one impacts the precision of the other. Aside from some amazing PS2 era titles, I’ve not seen a Biathlon game really tackle the sport properly… until now. NGL Biathlon 2026 is a Patreon-funded game that I purchased on Steam. The Steam version runs slightly behind the community-driven version, but they provide near-identical thrills and spills for this unique sport.
Once you’ve selected an existing skier or created your own, you can decide on running in championships, a full-blown career, or some individual events. I’d recommend trying out a career if you’ve built your own custom character because the base stats you have to work with will make your character very weak. Not only will you lack top speed and endurance during skiing, but your accuracy will also prevent clear shots in the shooting range. That’ll give time penalties or penalty loops to ski, depending on the event type. Expect to struggle to be anything other than in the bottom third of the field for the first season. Slowly, you’ll earn money to train your character and improve their stats. NGL Biathlon 2026’s career is built around this grind. It will take hours to get a semi-respectable character. At least the career is structured around tiered leagues and divisions, so you’ll be able to rise up the ranks to the Olympics eventually.
The key decision is that if you want to take on the online multiplayer or just have a 10-15 minute race without being last, you’ll need to choose from a large pool of existing skiers with decent stats. From there, you can choose from staggered starts or a mass start, and then select a venue and race length (laps and shooting range visits). Mass starts are more cinematic and are easier to immediately understand where you are placed in the race, but that comes with added skier chaos. You can slipstream your rivals between normal skiing, spending stamina on a sprint, or saving stamina by tucking up for downhill gliding sections. In contrast, the staggered starts will see 60 opponents released every 20 seconds, meaning you could be on lap 2, whilst someone else next to you is on lap 1, as you both overtake a knackered skier on lap 5. The key here is that weather plays a part, as blizzards and wind direction will change across the event. With mass starts, you’ll only deal with 20 other opponents, and you’ll experience the weather together.
I was surprised at just how different all the event types felt, whilst still being the exact same gameplay loop. Each track has multiple routes to ski through, which helps keep things fresh. Shooting is always tense, and it’ll make or break a race. As you approach the range, you’ll need to slow down or tuck in as much as possible to reduce your heart rate (which directly tires your skier during the alpine sections). If your heart rate is too high, you’ll be a bit jerky when moving the rifle target… and oh, how a tiny movement can have big repercussions! Shooting requires steel hands, as any tiny movement on the analogue stick will veer your sight well off course. It’s incredibly punishing, as it should be, but as soon as wind, snow, darkness, or your poor shooting stats get involved, it’s a stressful nightmare to keep the rifle straight and fire properly. This may put a few people off, and I think some sensitivity options would help ease new players in.
Whilst NGL Biathlon 2026 is a fun game to play, and it is regularly updated, there are a few technical niggles. I had the game get stuck loading races, and the excellent TV mode to watch races or replays crashed every single time the skier I followed crossed the finish line. Online exists, but I found entering lobbies a bit hit and miss. Possibly the weirdest bug I had happen a few times was that in some games, I was able to shoot 6 or 7 times when there were only 5 targets, and I had 5 bullets! The game is getting regular updates, though, with some Olympic skier liveries and bug fixes coming in fairly recently, so I hope these niggles get fixed over time.
NGL Biathlon 2026 is the definitive Biathlon game. There is nothing else out there taking the sport seriously and investing time to develop an intensive career mode, online multiplayer, or an in-depth stamina vs speed skiing discipline. It’s as close to a simulation as we have in 2026, and I’m delighted it exists.
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