The update brings in several fixes and UI/QoL improvements, based on the players' feedback. The most notable among them is the completely redesigned Estimator Tool and new wiki (but there are others, too).

Estimator tool

Estimator is not a tool that only covers the most basic cases anymore. It has become an ultimate trail-making (or planning) solution, whether you need to create a long new trail that curves around the mountain or a short bridge between existing trails. It is capable of planting multiple points for more flexibility. Here's a short gif demo of the new tool:

Wiki

Octohill now has brand-new public wiki. It has some useful information and guides, feel free to browse (and add more stuff to it)! You can access it through the "Wiki" in-game button from main menu and help pages, or through this link: octohill.wiki.gg.

Hotkeys

Among other things, the update also adds new hotkeys (camera rotations and overlays). For new players they will have default mappings, but if you've already launched the game you need to map them yourself (in Options->Controls). The recommended mappings are [Q][E][T][G] for camera rotations and [5]-[=] for overlays, but you can assign them to anything you want, of course.

Full changelog

• estimator tool: multiple points
• estimator tool: automatic turns and diagonal slopes, automatic join with existing trails and buildings
• estimator tool: realtime trail preview
• ticket offices now can be limited to fixed inflow or max visitors cap
• reduced hunger rate when not skiing
• reduced min peak height in dynamically generated maps to 10, min size to 48
• visitors now ignore disabled buildings in their pathfinding
• road trucks can now deconstruct too
• snowcats abandon their missions if no longer relevant, warehouses destroy unusable construction materials automatically
• ui: more informative current status and highlights for visitors and vehicles
• ui: tools popup stick longer when hovered, can be cancelled by RMB
• ui: manually opened overlays do not close when cancelling relevant tools
• ui: more hotkeys (camera rotations, overlays)
• ui: bulldozer-shaped mouse pointer
• fix: snowcats floating in the air
• fix: some gameplay settings not being updated or reset in playtime
• fix: phantom skiers reserving places on lifts forever
• fix: indecisive skiers jittering between two entrances of a building
• fix: skiers sometimes choose rental shop far away from their parkings when leaving
• fix: occasional crash when you destroy a building with very bad timing

Future plans

Hopefully, now I'll (mostly) focus on preparing new content. There's a long list piled up, probably it will be shaped into two or three major updates over the longer time span. So no details on what the next update will include yet. Stay tuned for more information!

[ 2025-04-13 12:21:05 CET ] [ Original post ]

Since some of you liked the cheat sheet, there are two more pages to it covering other common questions now. You can open it from the tasks tab on the left. Full changelog:

• Two more pages for the help menu
• Distinct color for disconnected building arrows (as red as possible) (the partially connected ones kept their orange)
• Minor UI improvements
• Fix road generation issues (affected Portillo and Chamonix maps, as well as some randomly generated ones)
• Fix stuck vehicles at the world edge
• Fix cars sometimes waiting in front of full parking lots

[ 2025-03-24 19:41:23 CET ] [ Original post ]

Thanks for all the feedback. It seems the connection mechanics are a bit too confusing to learn, which is why I introduce the cheat sheet - a short term solution and a guide that contains the most common problems and solutions with trails/buildings connections. It can be opened in game at any time by pressing "Help" under the tasks tab on the left (or pressing the tasks button if there's none left). You can also find it as a picture in the end of this announcement. Full changelog:

• change snow depth a bit so that deep snow doesn't look the same height as groomed area 1m above
• remove unused snow clearing tool
• fixed a bug with planting trees too high introduced with the previous patch
• fixed send feedback button (we've run out of quota yesterday, if you tried to send a message and failed please do that again)
• added cheat sheet with common issues

Other possible ways to guide new players and help them make things work are in development. And now, here's the current cheat sheet contents:
If your setup looks like the top row of the picture - please use the terraforming tools to make it look like the bottom row. And if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask!

[ 2025-03-21 18:19:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

• fix occasional crash when visitor enters a building at a wrong time
• fix problem with custom heightmaps loading on Windows

[ 2025-03-19 22:57:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

After few intense weeks of making everything perfect, the full release of Octohill Ski tycoon is finally here. Get your own ski resort now!

Things the full version brings in

• 11 preset maps of different size and difficulties
• Procedurally or heightmap image generated maps (up to 16 times bigger than the demo one)
• Hotels (for large resorts where you can't explore everything in one day)
• Top tier upgrades for transportation, food, safety and maintenance buildings
• Helicopters
• Snowboarders (don't worry, they behave)
• Better tools and overlays descriptions and effects
• A couple more tools (you can rename everything now)
• Additional settings to better configure your experience
• Tweaks, adjustments, fixes, rebalancing and optimisations
• Steam Cloud saves and achievements

You can continue your demo save in the full version. All the new buildings and improvements will be available (but the map itself won't change, of course). If it's been a long time since you've played the demo, you may want to click "reset tutorial" in the game settings. I'm very excited to see what kind of resorts you'll all build!

Next steps

As was mentioned before, there are some ideas of possible major updates flying around. For now however, they'll have to wait as I'm going to dedicate the next few weeks to fixing any possible issues you may encounter, if any. Feel free to ask anything about how the game works for you, issues or not, through any of the channels.

P.S.

Thanks to all the demo players for your input and support over the last few months, it's been immensely helpful. If you're enjoying the game, please leave a review. Early game reviews are very important for small game developers!

[ 2025-03-19 17:27:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

This announcement brings some very exciting news. There's a release date finally set, the demo and full versions content is finalised and on top of that Octohill takes part in the Steam Next Fest in the coming week.

Release date is set for March, 19!

Octohill Ski Tycoon is getting its full release on 19th of March. Save the date in your calendar! If you want a sneak peek at what will be available there have a watch of the updated gameplay trailer. Diverse maps, top tier buildings and vehicles - it's all in there.

Does it mean the development is over?

It means everything that was scoped for the full release is complete now (yay) and is not going to change. However, the game might receive some free major updates in the future (based on new ideas that were brought by the players or appeared too late to be included in the original scope). Thanks for all your support during the development!

Next Fest participation

Next Fest is an event organised by Steam (scheduled for the next week) where you try demos and learn more about thousands of upcoming games, and Octohill is participating in it with improved demo. Try it out during the week if you haven't done it yet, and please reach out if you have any questions (here or through any of the communication channels). The demo will stay here after the fest as well (and even after the full release), but it may stop receiving updates.

Demo updates

Improvements mentioned above are mostly quality of life features (new estimator tool to check the total elevation drop and possible trails between two tiles), some visual effects (more snow and animations) and building specific configurations (you can now set lifts to operate one way only when needed, or limit some operations ranges). Check the demo out now and wishlist the game if you like it!

[ 2025-02-23 23:40:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

The next important chapter which should be considered essential for a ski resort tycoon is finally complete: helicopters. In the game, they play several roles:

• Bright red search and rescue helicopters for urgent medical evacuation. Quick rescue will not only save lives but also help you mitigate the reputation penalty for injuries.
• Heavy-duty cargo helicopters for remote areas construction. High speed and no terrain restrictions will make them indispensable for late game resort expansions.
• Diverse private helicopters for passenger transportation. They bring in less visitors than buses or cars, but these visitors pay a lot more to land their helicopters right next to the slopes.

All of them also have their own advanced buildings equipped with helipads, more efficient and expensive than their helipadless counterparts. They will become an important part of your tycoon when the number of visitors gets closer to a thousand as land-based vehicles won't be fast enough to handle all the work. Helicopters and related buildings will not be available in demo but only in the full game. Stay tuned for more updates!

[ 2025-01-29 19:34:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello and Happy New Year! This post contains few updates on what I've been doing over the last weeks.

Discord server launch

Octohill now has an official discord server! You can join it from links on Steam pages, or through a new button in demo UI. There's not a lot going on there, but feel free to discuss any topics related to the game with me or other players.

Visual effects

Skiers and snowmobiles now leave pretty trails in the snow, and cast snow dust clouds when breaking snow at high speeds. It is already part of the demo, the screenshots and trailers will be gradually updated later to capture these effects.

Bugfixes

A couple of rare but critical bugs are fixed now so hopefully no crashes for demo players anymore. Also, AMD GPUs support for Linux has arrived (this includes SteamOS)!

[ 2025-01-07 23:53:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

Localization

Multiple language support has been in progress for quite some time now, and it's finally ready. So far, 7 languages are supported: English, French, German, Russian, Chinese (simplified) and Japanese. Languages other than English are prepared using machine translation (LLM based) with some surface level validation, please report any inconsistencies here in Steam discussions (or if you didn't find any issues with translation also mention it there, so I can remove the "machine translation" label from the language choice list) If you want to play the game in some other languages, please indicate so, with sufficient demand I may add more of them.

Dark mode

One highly requested feature was dark-colored UI scheme which is delivered as alternative dark mode. The default light color scheme also has been slightly adjusted. Hope you'll like the new colors! When the game is launched for the first time you'll have an option to select the language and color scheme, or you can easily switch them from the game options at any moment later. These features are already present in demo.

Next plans

Currently I'm working on some visual improvements, such as snow effects and trails for skiers and snowmobiles. It may take some trials and errors in order to make these effects performing good enough (there's a lot of skiers after all) while fitting the overall style of the game, we'll see how it turns out.

[ 2024-12-23 20:05:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

Free demo is finally out for everyone! Please give it a try and share your feedback! https://store.steampowered.com/app/3355160 While the full game is still under development, your opinions on demo may change what the final version will look like. The demo itself will be updated over time as well (no new content will be added as it will go directly to the full version, but the UI, gameplay and graphics will be kept in sync).

Playtesting notes

Huge thanks to everyone who took part in the demo playtesting, all your feedback was extremely useful (both positive and less so). I started addressing the issues from the first day and now all the urgent ones are fixed which is why this demo can be released now. Keep an eye for future public playtests!

Full release date

With all of that, the full version finally looks scoped out now which means I can announce (approximate) release dates. Octohill is coming live in March 2025, in just a few months!

[ 2024-12-05 18:27:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

Everyone registered should have already received an invitation. The registration will stay open for the weekend, make sure to click "Request Access" on the main page if you're interested!

Feedback reminder

Please leave your feedback via:

• Steam discussion thread if you want a public discussion
• "Send Feedback" button in the game if you'd rather keep it private (or anonymous)

The playtest will stay open uo to 29th of November, you can try the game demo anytime until then.

[ 2024-11-15 16:30:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

Thanks to everyone who showed interest in the public playtest, I'm now ready to open it to public!

Important dates

Playtest will start this Friday, 15th of November and will run for two weeks, until 29th of November so everyone registered can find some time to try the game. The registration will close in the first few days of the playtest so you still have chance to press this "Request Access" button if you haven't done so yet.

What to expect

As this playtest only covers the demo version of the game the expected playtime is just about one hour (unless you really strive for perfection), plan your time accordingly. The game build should be more or less stable and there will be an interactive tutorial (only English language for now) intended to guide you through the first steps, if you face any issues or struggle with some mechanics please don't hesitate to report it back.

Providing feedback

The main point of this playtest is of course me learning what needs to be changed. Please write whatever you feel about the game, especially the things you found inconvenient or problematic (but also things you liked or want to see added). There are two ways to provide feedback:

• Through the "Send feedback" button in the title/pause menu (bottom right corner) if you want it to be private and/or anonymous
• In the Steam discussion thread if you want it to be a public discussion

Hope to hear from all of you, feedback really matters to me!

[ 2024-11-11 22:49:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

So, the first announcement is here. I'm working on some exciting stuff right now, but you all would probably rather hear about the game state, its closeness to completion and the release plans so that's what I'm going to write about.

Demo

I have far-reaching ideas, but the game is already playable and fun. The current plan is therefore to have a free demo released ASAP, to show the world what the game is about, and also to gather some feedback from all of you. The demo will have all the promised main game features, except that it will be limited to one single small map. It will also miss some late-game content which is not mentioned on the store page yet, such as hotels or helicopters; the content for the demo is already complete (except two mechanics which are under development, there's a hint in the screenshot above).

Public playtest

Even demos should be properly tested and groomed before release. Internal stages of that are already in progress, but there will also be a public playtest in a few weeks. Register now by clicking the big green "Request Access" button on top of the store page!

Other updates

There's no full release date yet. For that, I first have to draw a line and decide which features will be a part of it, and which can be added in the later updates. Your feedback from playtests and demo will be an important part of these decisions.

Short summary

• Public playtest in a few weeks, register now!
• Free demo when the playtest feedback is processed and acted on
• More details will be coming later

[ 2024-11-05 23:32:30 CET ] [ Original post ]