Player’s guide

🚡Your first day

New here? Try the Tutorial on the title screen: a practice resort with a checklist that walks you through a lift, a trail, a lodge and your first day open. It keeps its own save, so it won’t touch your real mountain.

• Pick a mountain. Maple Notch is where new players start: a small, easy family hill, though with more thaws and ice. Juniper Ridge is the next step up, still friendly, with more room. Raven Peak is taller and steeper: stronger skiers, but fewer visitors, more wind and higher costs.
• Build a lift from the base. Click the cleared base area for the bottom station, then partway up for the top. Building clears trees in the way, and the price includes it.
• Cut a trail back down from the top station to the base. Guests need a lift from the base and a trail that brings them home.
• Build a lodge so guests can eat, warm up and use a restroom.
• Just want to build? Start a mountain as a Sandbox (the button next to Start here when you add a mountain): unlimited money, no goals, and more land to buy from day one. Sandbox resorts stay off the leaderboards.
• In a hurry? The welcome offers Build me a starter resort on Juniper Ridge and Maple Notch: a double chair, a green trail and a lodge built for you, ready to open. It’s all yours to change, and one undo takes it back.
• Open for the day. A new resort starts on Dec 10 with snow already on the mountain, so once a lift, a trail and a lodge are built you can open. The holiday crowds arrive on Dec 24.
• Later seasons start in pre-season (mid-November, bare slopes). Natural snow usually builds up by mid-December; Stay closed for a week skips ahead, stopping early for a big storm, and snowmaking gets you open sooner.

🏔️Building a better mountain

Trails

• Ratings come from steepness: green up to 25%, blue up to 40%, black up to 60%, and double black beyond. You can sign a trail differently in its panel, but guests on terrain beyond them complain and fall more.
• Build for every ability. Guests are a mix of beginners, intermediates, advanced and experts. Strong skiers with nothing challenging get bored; beginners on steep runs get scared.
• Width matters. Narrow trails are cheap but crowd fast; wide trails handle busy weekends.
• Trails can join other trails. End a trail on another one and skiers carry on down it. Branch off the side of a trail to make a choice of routes.
• Bridges: a trail can cross the creek; the bridge is built for you, priced by width.

Lifts

• Surface lifts (magic carpet, T-bar) are cheap and perfect for learning areas.
• Chairs go from double to triple to quad; express chairs move twice as fast and carry far more people per hour.
• Gondolas are pricey, warm on cold days, the first to stop in high wind, and the only lift sightseers will ride. A gondola from the base brings in non-skiers who buy a scenic ride.
• Transfers: a lift that loads near the top of another lets guests hop across without skiing down.
• Upgrading a lift: tap it overnight and choose Upgrade lift for a triple, quad, express or gondola on the same line. You pay the difference between the two lifts plus re-rigging, and each choice shows the extra riders an hour and about how long yesterday’s line would have been. A T-bar can become a chairlift.
• Moving a lift: open it overnight and choose Move a station, then drag the top or bottom station. It keeps its name and history and costs a quarter of the lift, plus any extra length and trees: far cheaper than tearing it down. Redraw any trails that lose their station.

Learning areas

Paint a gentle slope (Trail tool › paint an area) and serve it with a carpet or T-bar. First-timers practise there before moving on to green runs, and a ski school runs bigger classes with one. Without one, first-timers end up on real trails and complain.

Buildings

• Food: food truck, café, lodge (upgrades to medium and large), casual restaurant, fine dining, and the bar and pub for après.
• Base services: rental shop or rental and tuning center, ski store, gift kiosk, ski school, kids’ camp, first-aid clinic, restrooms.
• Getting here: shuttle stations and the transit center, for town buses and off-site parking shuttles.
• Trees, seats and lights: trees, benches, picnic tables, fire pits, lamp posts and trail lights can go anywhere off the trails. Trees, benches and picnic tables go down with one tap each, so you can plant a whole row by tapping along it.
• A place to rest: tired skiers stop at benches, picnic tables and fire pits for a few minutes and head back out with a bit more energy, all day long. Put seats by lift stations and the base, or beside a trail: skiers stop as they pass.
• Bulldoze (Landscape, or press B) removes one thing per tap: a single tree (planted or wild), a bench, a picnic table, a trail light, a lamp post or a fire pit. Handy for opening a view or tidying a spot without the big brush.
• Replant (Landscape) regrows the mountain’s own trees where they were cleared, $150 a tree. Paint over a glade between trails to fill it back in; trails, lift lines, learning areas, buildings and the lot stay clear.
• Buying land: after your first week open, Business › Land lists the 24 parcels round your property. Buy one, or lease it for a nightly rent; permits take three days. Road frontage has room for shuttle stations and a village, valley ground suits a second base, and mountain parcels add terrain. A lease can be handed back once nothing of yours stands on it.
• Moving a building: open its panel overnight and choose Move it. It keeps its name, size and history; it costs a fifth of what it took to build, plus clearing and leveling.

⛷️Keeping guests happy

• Every guest is simulated. Tap anyone on the mountain to follow them and read their thoughts: they’ll tell you about long lines, scary runs, cold, hunger and great days.
• The day report lists what went well and what didn’t, ranked by importance. The top notes are usually your best next moves.
• Lift lines are the biggest complaint. Add a lift, upgrade to an express, or spread guests out with more trails.
• Rentals: many beginners need rental gear when they arrive. Without a rental shop they rent in town and arrive annoyed.
• Lunch rush: around midday everyone wants to eat at once. The report tells you when the rush peaked and whether guests went hungry, and why: lunch cost too much, the lines were too long (and where), or there was nowhere to eat near where they ski. Guests look for food at lift stations and beside trails.
• Restrooms matter more than you think, especially at the top of busy lifts.
• Ski patrol reaches injured guests; the closer the hut, the faster. A clinic patches many of them up so they ski again.
• Families drop the kids at a kids’ camp and stay longer.

Parking and getting here

• When the main lot fills, guests are turned away. Tap Grow the main lot (in Build, or under Parking) and pick a + on the map: along the road, or a row below. Remove sections again if you over-built. When the lot can’t grow along the road any further, buy the land below it (Business › Land) and a second row of sections fits underneath.
• Off-site parking with a shuttle station takes the overflow; a town bus brings guests with no car at all.
• Guests use the rental shop, school or clinic nearest to where they parked or got off the bus.

📋Running the resort

Under Business you’ll find Operations, Prices, Events and Evenings.

• Three plans: weekdays, weekends and holidays, and the quiet ends of the season. Each sets which lifts run (full, slow or off), which buildings open (or lunch only), parking sections, hours, staffing and patrol.
• Cut back on quiet days, not busy ones. Guests expect more on weekends, at higher prices and as your reputation grows. The plan shows how much guests will notice.
• A skeleton patrol saves money but can turn an injury into an expensive claim.
• Prices: charge more on weekends and holidays. Guests compare every price with what’s normal; charge too much and some will pass.
• Season passes sell once, on your first open day of the season. Holders ski free about eight days each, mostly busy ones.

❄️Snow and weather

• Each trail needs enough base to open (steeper trails need more). The Snow panel shows every trail’s base and the forecast.
• Snowmaking runs on cold nights and opens trails early in the season. Use Auto with a target depth so the guns don’t run all winter.
• Base snowmaking keeps the base area white. A bare, muddy base costs you satisfaction and stops lessons.
• Grooming is nightly by default. Leave a trail ungroomed for powder after storms (and moguls later): strong skiers love it.
• Powder days (6 inches or more) bring a crowd. Be open.
• Wind holds stop exposed lifts in the morning; winds often ease by noon.

🌙Après-ski and night skiing

Set both under Business › Evenings, separately for each plan.

• Après: after the lifts close, the bar, lodge, restaurants and base cafés and food trucks stay open (cafés and trucks until 7 PM). Guests who had a good day stop in, more on weekends and sunny afternoons, and most of all with a bar.
• Last call: 7 PM, 9 PM, 11 PM or 1 AM. The lodge stops serving at 8 and restaurants at 10; the bar and fire pits stay until last call. Late nights pay staff time and a half after 10, plus security.
• Night owls and locals: with a late last call, night owls go round again and locals drive up just for the bar. Late on weekends usually pays; late on weeknights usually doesn’t.
• Light security is cheaper, but a rowdy night past 11 can cost you reputation.
• Fire pits draw a free après crowd, best within a short walk of a bar or lodge.
• Night skiing: light a trail from its panel (overnight), then pick night hours. Only lit trails run after dark, and only lifts with a lit trail off the top. Locals buy night tickets after work; some day guests stay on.
• Trail lights (Buildings › Lights and fire pits) fill any dark stretch on a lit trail.
• An automatic pole in an odd spot, like where two trails merge? Bulldoze it for free. It stays gone and the trail stays lit, so you can put your own exactly where you want.

🎆Events

Book under Business › Events for the coming weekend. Each draws a bigger crowd and, if guests are happy, a reputation boost. One of each per season.

💰Money

• Every day has a report: revenue and expenses line by line, and the Money panel keeps your history and season totals.
• Season charts: Money charts guests, profit, satisfaction and cash for every open day of the season. Hover or tap a chart to read a day.
• Why today: the top of each day report compares guests with your last week of open days, says what made the difference, and names the biggest leak to fix.
• Problems on the map: while open, amber and red tags mark long lift lines, a full lot and slow building lines. Tap one to open it; switch them off under Map labels.
• The bank lends against your reputation and your best season. Interest is charged every night, including closed nights and summer.
• Overhead runs every day; before your first open day each season it’s at a lower, off-season rate.
• In trouble? If the bank calls in the loan, a certain investor in a fur coat may offer to pay it off for a share of everything you earn. You can buy him out later, at a price.
• Selling: removing a trail, lift or building returns a quarter of what it cost.

🏆Leaderboards and visiting

• Sign in (title screen › Community) to save your mountains online, play on any device and appear on the leaderboards.
• Leaderboards rank busiest day, best day, best season, all-time guests and biggest resort, across all mountains or filtered to one.
• Visit anyone’s resort read-only and press Watch a day to see it run. Nothing you do there changes it.
• Likes pay: each new like on your resort pays a $100,000 bonus, up to 10 a season. A staff pick pays $1,000,000.
• Five mountains: you can keep up to five resorts going at once.

⌨️Keyboard shortcuts

✨Hidden gems

• Map labels by type: the tag button by the map controls hides trail, lift or building labels separately.
• Trail colour edges (menu) show each trail’s rating as a coloured edge; turn them off for a cleaner look.
• Graphics (menu): if your device struggles, a lighter setting keeps it smooth.
• Help bulb off: know your way around? Hide it in the menu. That also hides the circles that suggest where a new resort’s first lift goes.
• Plan a single day differently: in Operations, pick another plan for just one day (say, the weekend plan for a holiday Friday).
• Fire pit without a stone base: turn off Stone base in its panel for just the ring and log benches on the snow.
• Raise the base: a building on a slope can be levelled higher from its panel, overnight.
• Orange dots mark where new features live after an update, until you tap them. The version number on the title screen lists every change.
• Your phone stays awake while the game runs, so a long day at 1× won’t lock the screen.