Phases: Letting a Resort Grow Instead of Scrolling a List
A list of thirteen businesses is a spreadsheet, not a ski resort. Expansion phases with goals, construction costs and build times turned the list into a resort that visibly grows from a beginner slope into an alpine destination.
The original prototype showed every business from the start: platter lift, T-bar, hut, chairlifts, ski school, gondolas, après-ski bar. You could see the whole game on the first screen. That is how many classic idle games work, and it has one big problem: there is nothing left to discover.
Four stages of a ski resort
I split each location into expansion phases. Each phase has a name that says what the resort is becoming:
- Beginner slope: a platter lift, a T-bar and a small hut.
- Family area: more lifts, a ski rental, a self-service restaurant.
- Winter sports centre: big chairlifts, a ski school, gondolas.
- Alpine resort: the regional specialities.
Below the last visible business sits a card that says what is needed to open the next area. The first version listed several criteria, like "25 platter lifts, 25 T-bars, 10 huts". I then added three more ingredients:
- a minimum production per second, so the player's whole engine has to be strong enough, not just one business;
- a construction cost, so opening a new area is a decision, not something that happens automatically;
- a build time, so the new area is something to look forward to.
While a build is running the card shows "Expansion in progress: developing the family area" with a countdown. When it is done, nothing happens on its own: the player taps "view" and the phase opens with a small celebration. I like that rule a lot. The reward moment belongs to the player, not to a timer that might fire while they are looking at something else.
The first success must be immediate
My first idea was no build time at all for phase 2: the very first expansion should feel instant. Later playtests changed that to a short build of a few minutes, because a short wait teaches the mechanic before the long waits arrive. What stayed is the principle: the first expansion has to come early and must not frustrate.
The criteria were also simplified later. A long checklist turned out to be noise on a small phone screen. Today each phase has one production goal and at most one stock goal ("own 25 T-bars"), plus the cost. The card shows the businesses the phase will open as small icons, or as dark silhouettes if the player has never seen them before. A silhouette is a surprisingly strong motivator.
Different businesses per location
On the same day the data model changed: instead of one global list of businesses, every location has its own list with its own phases, prices and cycle times. The catalogue of business types (id, icon, category) stays global; the location decides which of them it offers and at what price.
This was the step that made regions with their own character possible. It also brought per-location phase names, because "Alpine resort" sounds odd for a resort in Canada. (Canada now has a "Rocky Mountain Resort", Japan a "Powder Paradise".)
Upgrades: brainstorm and a deliberate "no"
I brainstormed location upgrades that make all businesses faster: snow groomers, a car park, a multi-storey car park, shuttle buses, floodlights. Each group got three levels and a wrench icon next to the location heading.
I also asked myself whether every individual business should have its own upgrades. The honest answer was: it would be overloaded. A player already decides how many units to buy and when to hire staff. Another layer per business would double the number of buttons without adding much thinking. So per-business upgrades were dropped, on purpose. The location upgrades were later switched off as well until the rest of the balancing is stable. They are still in the code, waiting.
Small things from the same day
- A settings screen behind a gear icon: light and dark mode, music and sound switches (before there was any sound at all).
- Location ids like
AT1,IT1,FR1: country code plus number. They read well in configuration and leave room for a second resort in the same country. - A dialog for hiring the manager of a business, with a bigger icon and a single buy button. When staff is hired, the dialog disappears for good.
- An unlock celebration when a new region becomes available. It would later change completely, as the next entries explain.
Looking back, this was the day the game got its shape. Everything that came later (regions, ratings, projects) is a variation of the same idea: a place that grows in visible steps.