April 15, 2009
MOUNTAIN TOPS, SNOWFLAKES AND
WINTER FUN!
You’ve created a wonderful little
mountain village, complete with its local cheese specialties, wandering
heavy-hided bovines, and picture-perfect landscapes, but you now want to take it
to the next level: attracting visitors by the dozen with the heavy artillery of
tourism, the must-have of mountain life: skiing!
The Ski GEM offers a large number of
activities, the main one, and also the most fun, being the Ski Resort!
Ski-trails, ski-lifts and all related activities are the everyday business of
the young mountain resort managers…
As manager of your very own ski
resort, you will take on a large number of fun tasks! First and foremost, you
will need to decide where to place your snowy empire in the making. The
mountains are huge and the possibilities aplenty! Once you have spotted the
perfect place to set up your resort, you will need to place your first ski-lift
to aim for the summits! You have access to different types of lifts (ski-tow,
cable-cars, chairlifts, etc.), which are all adapted to different types of
terrain. By starting out with a small ski-tow, you can climb high enough along
the slopes to place your first ski-trails.
Draw your trails freely in the
environment, in the same way you would place a road! Avoid trees and rocks, aim
for a few nice slopes and within seconds, you will have a ski-trail worthy of
the name! Green? Blue? Or maybe even red if there are a few nice bumps?…
Choosing the difficulty level of your trails is vital as you will need to
provide for all tastes and altitudes!
It’s up to you to decide what the
"official" colour of the trail will be, but the game also indicates its actual
difficulty level in real time. Don’t be afraid to include a small red portion in
a blue trail, there’s no harm in giving your skiers a bit of a fright once in a
while! But don’t overdo it, as they might quickly become frustrated or
disappointed… And you will need to create trails for all levels, from green to
black…
You will quickly realise that you
can create a real network of trails that will satisfy most of the skiers looking
for adrenaline pumping speed! And you will also have the opportunity to create
new trails or modify old ones once in a while for more diversity!
Of course, beyond the trails and
ski-lifts, you will need to build other installations to create the perfect ski
resort: high altitude shelters for your visitors to keep warm, snack-bars along
the slopes for them to grab a little something on the go, a restaurant
overlooking the breathtaking panorama… And very soon you will be running the
new Aspen!
But the greatest thing about all
this is that, once you have finished setting up everything, you can sit back and
watch your skiers and snowboarders speeding down your trails, and fully
appreciate all the hard work you put into your resort! But watch out for
accidents… It will then be high time to build a hospital at the bottom of the
slopes…