Building awful ski resorts with dangerous slopes in Snowtopia Eurogamer.net If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy. Building awful ski resorts with dangerous slopes in Snowtopia Will fondue nicely. Feature by Robert Purchese Senior Staff Writer Additional contributions by Christian Donlan Updated on 2 Feb 2021 13 comments Chris: Don't come to my ski lodge. Genuinely, the place is horrible. The queues are unbelievable and the lifts are old and small and there aren't enough of them. The routes I have for you are terrible, terrible routes - dull, but also dangerous. And I have a builder's hut stuck right in the middle of the main area. Don't know what happened there. Snowtopia Ski Resort Tycoon Developer: Tea for two Publisher: Goblinz Studio Platform: Played on PC Availability: Out in Steam Early Access for £19.49 (currently reduced to £17.49). A free demo is available. The thing is, I have had a brilliant time. Snowtopia is a tycoon game in early access. You have a pristine mountain and then you turn it into a business. You keep everyone happy and fill the slopes with great lines and then you sit back and watch it all work. Or watch it all fail. But for me, the main appeal at the moment is just the setting. I love these mountains, these beautiful trees. I love trying to find a good line to put up and I love just disappearing off and moving the camera around. Snowtopia is a triumph of setting - it really delivers an alpine flavour. And it has a great name. It also has problems, I think. Onboarding, as people like to call it I gather, is a bit unfriendly at the moment. It feels rushed and uncared for - ugly blocks of tiny text. And the camera feels a little jittery - it's too quick to move, and it's hard to be precise. I try to zoom in on something and I lose my little sky empire entirely and rush through the side of a hill. These things can all be fixed, I am sure. And I hope they will be, because more than anything I am on Snowtopia's side. My own ski lodge may be a disaster, but I want this wider enterprise to succeed. This is a world I love spending time in. Bertie's ski wonderland. Note the challenging run on the left-hand side. Let's take a closer look... I'm hoping it'll propel him into that building. Bertie: I have a real problem here: I don't want to build anything! It's like a lesson in how humans can mess up a gorgeous vista by putting metal things everywhere. Here's a metal thing with wires on. Here's a metal shed to do one of a variety of things. I don't want them! No matter what I do, I can't make them look lovely. I can't make them look at one with their surroundings, because what possibly could? This is a serene, pristine mountainous land. This dilemma has genuinely taken me hours to get over! Talk about contouring... This is a view you'll see a lot! Actually, full exposure - and promise you won't laugh? - I completely forgot ski lifts were a thing. I've never actually been skiing you see. And I feel like Snowtopia is laughing at me a bit because of it. It's not being mean on purpose - it's the least mean game I can imagine (it's so gentle and forgiving I'm not sure you can actually do anything wrong) - but it's mean in the way a bunch of friends are when they talk about skiing, and you've never been. I just don't understand it. I don't know how ski lifts are positioned. I don't know how slopes work, or where it's best to put them. I just want to make a deathrun out of a huge mountain and maybe kill a few skiers, let my mind run riot. I don't want to learn the basics. That's where Snowtopia really stalls for me at the moment: the basics. It shows you a gorgeous playground with seemingly endless scope and then stands in the way of it and says, 'Whoa no not yet! Let's just take those skis off again.' Of course, you'll clip them back on eventually, you just need a bit of perseverance, but referring to a help index every few minutes is not particularly fun. Nevertheless, I'm charmed. Snowtopia is a very pleasant place to be, jutting metal be damned. And if it can sort out its own beginner slopes (which is exactly what this early access journey is about, after all) it could be a lot of fun indeed. Become a Eurogamer subscriber and get your first month for £1 Get your first month for £1 (normally £3.99) when you buy a Standard Eurogamer subscription. Enjoy ad-free browsing, merch discounts, our monthly letter from the editor, and show your support with a supporter-exclusive comment flair! Support us View supporter archive More Features Digital Foundry Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090: a new level in graphics performance The Digital Foundry video review - and how the new GPU champion delivers for 4K 120fps gaming. Feature Evercore Heroes wants to wind people up the right way "There's less rage at them, because they didn't end your fun." Feature What games get wrong about horses And what they could do about it. 28 Feature Shout out to all the Overwatch supports - where would we be without you? Merci. 55 Latest Articles Digital Foundry Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090: a new level in graphics performance The Digital Foundry video review - and how the new GPU champion delivers for 4K 120fps gaming. Feature Evercore Heroes wants to wind people up the right way "There's less rage at them, because they didn't end your fun." Google announces cloud gaming Chromebooks less than a fortnight after Stadia shutdown GeForce Now preinstalled. 4 Genshin Impact Path of Gleaming Jade dates, login event rewards Including other anniversary rewards and how to claim them. Supporters Only Premium only Off Topic: Take a minute to appreciate Cookin' with Coolio's incredible scallops recipe. What a great book. Premium only Off Topic: Reading City of Glass in comic form "Where exactly am I going?" Premium only Off Topic: Il Buco is a transporting film about a really big hole Underlands. Off-Topic Netflix handled Sandman brilliantly It was Dreamy. 9 Buy things with globes on them And other lovely Eurogamer merch in our official store! Explore our store