Ski Resort

Ski Resort is a relaxed tycoon game on a snowy mountain seen from the valley. You start with a bare slope, a village at its foot and a few thousand coins. Drag a lift up from a village station, drag a piste back down, and skiers start arriving from the car park, queue at the bottom and ride up. A piste is graded green, blue, red or black by how steep the ground is between its two stations; an easy run on steep ground winds down in switchbacks and costs more to cut. Drag lifts are cheap and short, chairlifts carry twice as many, and a gondola runs all the way to the peak, even in a storm.

Every skier is a little figure with a skill level and a wish: a black run, a lesson, a hot chocolate, the snow park, short queues. Send them down a piste that is too hard and they fall over gently in the snow. Huts make the day work: a rental hut and a ski school for beginners, mountain restaurants for lunch, a sledging run for the little ones and a rescue sled for anyone who tumbles. At night the piste bashers groom the runs and the snow cannons hum, because a warm spell melts the lower slopes. Guests leave reviews as stars, and the daily ledger shows every coin in and out, line by line.

A winter is twenty-eight days of seeded weather with three holiday peaks, followed by a short summer to plan, build at a discount and set the next season's lift-pass price. Twenty milestones lead from your first lift to a black run with no queues and resort of the year, and if the coins ever run out, the village pays the staff and lends you a snow cannon. Run the days at 1×, 2× or 4× or skip to morning; it is a game to relax with that still gives your brain plenty of queues and slopes to juggle. Sandbox unlocks everything for an endless mountain of your own, and the whole resort saves itself in your browser.