New systems
- Mountain Policies. Fourteen resort rules you research in a new Training branch, then switch on in Manage → 📜 Mountain Policies. They include Volunteer Ski Patrol, Speed Patrol, Helmet Rule, Backcountry Access Gates, Uphill Access Pass or Tour-Buster, Fresh Tracks, Surge Pricing, Kids Ski Free, Locals’ Discount, Singles Line, Skiers Only, Powder Clause and Wildlife Closures. Each one is a trade: money, safety, rating, Core Cred and stoke.
- Lifts age with the calendar. A lift is old at 10 years and dangerous at 15. It can fail its yearly inspection and is shut until it’s repaired. Very old lifts can have incidents that injure riders. Refurbish or replace them from Manage → 🏗️ Lift Ages & Inspections. Older lifts also cost more to insure and run.
- The road in. Mornings now have a rush hour, and a road that’s too small jams. Day-trippers who get stuck turn around and go home, and a jam hurts your rating the next day. You can ease it by widening the road, adding ski buses, using carpool lots, or giving staff and guests beds on the mountain.
- Parking reservations. Guests can book every space or a share of the lot, which ends the morning race for a spot. It costs Core Cred and stoke.
- EV chargers in the car parks. Buy chargers per lot and set a charging price. As more drivers come electric you earn rating and demand bonuses at 50/75/90/100%, plus a $1.5M grant at 100%. It also slows climate warming.
- Regulars. Keep up to five guests and follow them across seasons. You can watch them improve, try harder terrain, get hurt, or worse. Find them in Manage → ⭐ Regulars.
- Follow a guest properly. A guest you follow now has a day plan you can read: what they’ve done, what they’re doing now, what’s next and what they’ve spent. The camera locks on to them.
Buildings & looks
- Hotels, housing, lodges, restaurants and shops rebuilt from a new kit of parts: real roofs, dormers, balconies, shutters and windows that light up at night. Patrol huts, the Bike Shop, Picnic Pavilion, Golf Clubhouse and Nordic Centre were rebuilt the same way.
- North American looks for 16 lodging buildings and 9 base-area buildings, chosen when you place one. Your existing buildings keep their look.
- More looks: Ski-In Condos get four Canadian ski-town fronts, and the Heritage Farmhouse gets six more (Engadin, Norwegian, Japanese and three North American). The look picker is now grouped by region.
- New buildings: Ski Bum A-frames (three shanty cabins), Chainsaw Chuck’s carving shop (Retail) and a Covered Skating Rink (Recreation).
- Snowmobiles now have real-size models, one per type.
Ski mode & people
A new hero rider with knees and elbows: a freeskier in a baggy anorak, or a snowboarder in an Amped style. Your rider now wears an olive jacket over black pants.
Skis and boards are properly shaped, with sidecut, rocker, bindings and boots.
The whole crowd wears the new rider model.
World & graphics
- A mixed forest of hand-made tree models and procedural trees, grown in natural stands: pines on sunny faces, firs in shade, groves of birch and hardwoods.
- Runs are graded by their own descent. A cat track across a steep face now signs green instead of black.
- A readable avalanche hazard map. Your runs, lifts and buildings are drawn on it, anything in a slide’s path today turns red, and slide paths show as ribbons.
- Wind that flows around the mountain on the hazard map, instead of straight parallel lines.
- Access roads now have hairpin bends you can drive, and the road surface no longer folds into facets on steep ground.
Summer
- The alpine coaster is much easier to place. Auto-switchbacks zig-zag your line down steep faces, and red marks show exactly where and why a line is refused.
- Balance
- The lesson price can go down to Free. A cheap ski school speeds up how fast guests improve and earns Core Cred and stoke, but it never replaces having instructors.
- Interface
- Bold names in tips and Help cards are clickable and take you to that tab, panel or item.
- The run inspector shows connections correctly for runs that branch off or feed into other runs.
Performance & fixes
- Fewer stutters: shaders are prepared in idle moments instead of on first sight, and the night-lighting pass is cheaper.
- The game day runs as a set of named systems under the hood. Nothing changes in play, but it’s the basis for faster days later.
- Trailer capture no longer freezes or shows black frames.