Summary

Above the Snow is a story-driven management tycoon game that lets you operate your very own mountain lodge in the Alps! Here, not only will you have to make do with whatever manpower you can muster, but you’ll also need to care for guests, manage staff, design hiking trails through dangerous, weather-affected terrain, and occasionally respond to urgent rescue requests. Can you restore the rundown resort and turn it into a thriving destination?

Plotline

Francis Harland is in deep, deep trouble…

He has been racking up tabs he couldn’t pay, and his sponsor, Pedro, isn’t taking his failures lightly. He begged for another chance to make things right, and Pedro, feeling sentimental at the moment, decided to give him a final chance.

Pedro wants Francis to help his brother, Nikolas Bolden, who is supposedly managing a mountain shelter (or lodge) by himself in the Corotan region of the Swiss Alps, and to fulfill his vision of turning the quaint mountain resort into the region's most popular spot. This means renovating a rundown shelter, establishing new hiking trails in the mountains, and ensuring you have enough supplies to keep your visitors well-fed, comfy, and warm.

Thankfully, Francis won’t be doing this alone. His cheerful cousin, Eva, will be accompanying him, and as you progress in the game, you’ll meet and interact with a host of other new characters, some of whom you will be able to control eventually as part of the lodge’s workforce.

Gameplay

Before you start playing, you’ll be presented with two game modes: the story-driven campaign, which I’d personally recommend playing first, and an endless mode called Endless Winter. The game also offers three difficult levels, with the easiest being the Cozy experience and the toughest mode being the Challenging experience. Of course, for me, I always start in the middle… at least for a genre that I’m very familiar with, so that’s what I went with.

The core gameplay loop in Above the Snow centers on two main aspects: the mountain trails and the lodge's day-to-day operations. The game will have you start at the lodge since that’s where you’ll get to unlock new tech, offer new services to your visitors, and naturally, renovate and design your mountain shelter.

Like any good hotel located in bitterly cold areas, there are four main criteria that will determine if your resort will succeed or fail: comfort, storage, entertainment, and, of course, warmth. This means that you’ll need to place enough décor and furniture – or, in the case of warmth, heaters/radiators (coverage is important for heaters) - that can contribute to these criteria. As a resort, you’ll also need to have enough beds to house your guests. It wouldn’t do to have guests sleeping on the floor now, would it?

As your mountain shelter's reputation grows, mainly through successful stays and hiking trips, you’ll be expected to raise the level of comfort you provide to match it. There’s a total of five stars to be earned, so that translates into plenty of playtime – sweet!

In Above the Snow, you’ll get to manage not just the interior of the resort but also its exterior spaces, called the Yard. In the Yard, you’ll be able to build structures like a rescue center in case of accidents in the mountains, a weather station to get early reports of bad weather (so you can prepare beforehand), a rental shop to rent out gear and equipment to visitors, and even a woodshed to harvest wood from the surrounding trees.

Thankfully, not all of these structures need to be manned, though due to the harsh weather in the Alps, you’ll need to regularly have the structures repaired and maintained throughout your playthrough. This also includes critical structures that are already present in the game, such as the garage, which houses your snowcat (you’ll need this to more quickly traverse the snow and to haul purchased supplies from the town nearby back to your lodge), the landing pad for helicopter services, and most crucially, the radio tower that allows you access to the tech tree.

The tech tree is among the most important features to progress in this game, mainly because you’ll need it to unlock new outdoor areas and rooms in your lodge. You can also unlock new tech, better gear and equipment, improved (and fancier) furniture and décor, and even character upgrades there, but it’ll cost ya! As your reputation increases, you’ll be able to upgrade your radio tower and access a new outer ring of tech and upgrades as well.

The second part of the game, aside from shelter management, is trail design and setup. You see, like in real life, hikers have very different preferences when it comes to mountain hiking. Some prefer a cozy and scenic stroll through the snow-covered woods, while others love a real challenge with steep slopes and dangerous cliffsides to scale… and you’ll have to cater to all of them. This means setting up different trails, utilizing different paths to reach, oftentimes, the same destination. There is even special furniture you can place in your mountain resort to attract certain types of hikers.

From time to time, incidents will happen, say… a hiker broke his leg while hiking, or discovered your food supplies had been decimated by a rat infestation. For the latter, the resolution is easier – you just need to pick the best option out of the three given. However, for accidents on the trail, you’ll need to launch a rescue mission, haul the injured hiker (or hikers) back to your hotel to stabilize them before deciding, depending on the severity of their injuries and how much health they have left, which transport to use to send them back to town. After all, helicopter rides can cost quite a lot, and those funds could be better spent on setting up new trails or renovating a room.

Above the Snow also has a really huge map with plenty of points of interest, allowing you to set up a really complex web of hiking trails across the Alps. This is especially true when you consider that you may sometimes need to create several paths to the same destination to cater to different hikers.

As fun as the game is, however, I did notice some interesting quirks in the game design that players can use to, for instance, optimize their play. One of these quirks involves restoring your workers' stamina. Workers typically need to rest to restore their stamina, which makes sense, but oddly enough, they can also restore their stamina (and not consume them) whenever you send them on trail setups, or supply runs to town.

I also think the game could add a bit more guidance to its rescue mission tutorial. It’s probably partly my fault for not checking the trail's map, but I thought I’d be able to rescue whoever’s injured simply by adding people to the rescue center. To my chagrin, I only found out what I actually needed to do after the poor hiker died, and I had to switch to the trail map to create a new hiking path to a new destination.

The game could add a red dot to the trail tasks button whenever there are any pending tasks as well. I find myself often missing tasks that are listed there just because I didn’t check it as often enough.

Graphics/ Sound

Above the Snow features a cozy, semi-realistic 3D art style set in the snowy Alps. The visuals lean into a warm yet wintery aesthetic, contrasting thick snowfields, wooden lodges, and rugged mountain terrain with soft lighting and atmospheric fog. This creates a setting that feels both inviting and harsh.

In terms of sound, the game supports its calm-but-tense alpine atmosphere with a soundtrack built around soft, ambient music with emotional undertones, shifting between relaxing, cozy lodge themes and more dramatic, weather-driven tension during storms or crises.

Conclusion

All in all, Above the Snow stands out from the other resort-style management games by going beyond mere optimization and building a thriving resort in a dangerous, living mountain environment, focusing more on its character-driven storytelling, with a crew of staff members who each have their own personalities, strengths, and personal arcs. If this sounds like a game you’d like to play, be sure to check out Above the Snow now on Steam!