Humble Choice (February 2024): Snowtopia

Snowtopia is part of February’s Humble Choice.

“Build your ideal ski resort. Keep skiers smiling with fresh pistes and fine facilities. Ski, build and chill in the wintry world of Snowtopia where everyone is welcome! “

This is another of those games that I should love. In theory. I had never heard of this game before, but when I saw that it’s part of this month’s Humble Choice, I was happy to give it a try. Unfortunately, this game does disappoint.

First of all, the developers warn you not to buy the game for its full price (20.99 €)! If you do want to have it (outside of this month’s Humble Choice), then wait for a sale! Having seen that, you can probably guess that the developers are fully aware of the game’s issues. I, for one, quickly noticed that the game has no money feature. You can build as much as you want, nothing costs anything and the skiers don’t have to pay for anything either. This makes for a nice sandbox experience, of course. But it’s clear that the game is missing features and the game could have used some more funds to get finished.

I do not ever expect a game to have super modern AAA graphics (whatever that even is…) for it to be a good game. I like something that’s got charme (like Parkasaurus, for example). Something that makes me want to look at what I am building. Now, here we have a game about building a ski resort. Naturally, the prominent colour is white! White everywhere. On the ground, on trees, on buildings. This makes the game look very bland. Unfortunately, the buildings lack details and the skiers all look the same apart from the colour of their coats – which corresponds to the difficulty of the slope they want to get on. Now, even if a game’s graphics are boring, as long as the game is engaging or has great features, then it’s still not that bad. But as I already wrote: This game is slim on features.

My interim conclusion is that this game isn’t bad as it is. It’s just obviously lacking features and polish. I don’t think I would spend a lot of money on it. But I got the Humble Choice because of Life is Strange: True Colours. And as a basically free extra game, Snowtopia is okay… but as you can see, this is not the end of this post about Snowtopia yet…

Because – as is often the case – the modders are here to the rescue! There are mods for the game which you can get them from this website. The most prominent one is probably “Avalanche” which comes with several new features including the ability to turn on money and a lot of new maps!

Unfortunately, the game’s graphics are still bland and white and boring – but the skiers have different looks now and aren’t all clones anymore! The mod does make the game a lot more fun to play, though, and there are so many maps to play on with different difficulties!

Altogether, I would say that I don’t feel I wasted my time playing this game and it’s a nice addition to take “for free” with this bundle, also a nice theme, but I think I’ll play other simulation/building games instead.