Ski Resort

I immediately cancelled my planned holiday to the Bahamas (Mojang had refused to pay for it anyway, the cheapskates), and then started packing. I couldn't wait for two weeks of fast, fun, no-actual-risk-to-my-delicate-bodily-frame skiing!

SO LONG, WORK!

Let's hit the slopes! I load the map and emerge in a small, windowless room with no obvious exits. Er, let's escape the room!

But how? A wooden sign states in firm capital letters SPAWN PLANE. This worries me. I can't even ski yet, let alone fly a plane. At least if I crash while skiing I'll only hurt myself, but if I crash an ENTIRE PLANE I'm bound to hurt others. What if I fly the plane and crash it into the mountain where it hits the only skii instructor and to punish me he refuses to teach me how to skii and ruins my holiday.

It was a risk I was just going to have to take, because there was no other way out of the room. Luckily, there was a friendlier sign in the room too (you could tell it was friendlier because it was in lower case, unlike SPAWN PLANE, that all-capitals jerk).

Slightly worried, I pressed the button and a tiny plane spawned in the corner of the room. I quickly hopped in before it could leave without me and ARRRRRRGHHH!

Luckily, I'm not really in control of the plane. I can shift it around for a better look at my surroundings, but this whole sequence is on-rails, offering a tantalising view of my holiday to come. This is actually pretty neat! A lovely sky-high view giving my eyes a fine taste of this huge ski resort. I'm starting to enjoy my holiday again, now I know I'm not going to die in a plane crash. Yet. Holiday! Yeah!

But first I have to get through the airport.

I step inside and find a room offering free ski boots! The SKY SKI BOOTS boast 'no fall damage' and the SAFETY SKI BOOTS have the catchy tagline 'Great if you don't wanna die'.

I helped myself to the SANIC SKI BOOTS (er, I think they mean 'sonic'), which boast +45% movement speed. Now I'll be able to run from slope to slope, safety be damned, and get the most out of my holiday! "Tom, you're a genius!" I reminded myself aloud.

I strapped the Sanic boots on and immediately felt their amazing power. You should've seen how fast I ran into that wall! Even the blood from my nose seemed to be pouring out faster than usual. Wow!

These boots truly were the bees knees, except they were cool and I liked them and they weren't the knees of a bee which would just be creepy and gross. Huh, I guess they weren't the bees knees at all then. Good.

I hopped aboard a bus and started speeding up to the resort. This ride was way longer than my four-second plane journey, but it was hard to complain when there was such a gorgeous view to keep my eyes company. Dense forest with occasional winking peeks at the mountain peaks I'd soon be sliding down. Then at last, I arrived!

The resort was my oyster and I was a seafood-starved holidaymaker ready to chow down! SHOW ME TO THOSE SLOPES!!!

...Seriously, isn't there anyone around to show me to the slopes?

Confused, I started exploring. I found a candy store, several restaurants (including the brilliantly named 'L'OVERPRICED RESTAURANT') and all sorts of delicious treats to cure an empty stomach. Only problem was, my wallet was just as empty. Then again, I'd noticed a large box of text, ruining every screenshot, telling me I had 'credits'.

But I had no idea how to spend these credits and trying to work it out was only making me hungrier. And angrier. I didn't want to take a holiday from both Mojang and the law, but if needs must...

Just as I was scribbling SWAG on the side of a burlap sack and preparing for an exciting new life of crime, I noticed a machine marked ATM. Aha! So this is where you cashed in your credits. I walked up and pressed the button on the machine, looking forward to being showered in money.

And suddenly I was teleported out of the resort, and into a nightmare.

...Well this is embarrasing. Turns out I hadn't fallen into a deadly trap at all. Seems that this was just how you exchanged credits for currency in this crazy resort. I was inside the ATM. Handy for hiding your PIN number from onlookers, I guess! I exchanged 50 of my holiday credits for a few holiday bucks, then smacked the EXIT ATM button.

Now a little too shaken up to eat, I decided to spend my newly withdrawn cash on the slopes instead.

But instead of finding a chance to go skiing (y'know, the entire reason I took this holiday) I stumbled upon something called the LIFE OPERATOR.

It's one of many mini-games dotted around the resort. Though the title suggested this was a more dramatic version of Operation, it was actually a chance to help other skiers and make money. Neat!

I hit the button, and was suddenly teleported to a high-up booth. Simple instructions told me that skiers would spawn and move to a red line, and it was my job to spawn a chairlift to take them up the mountain. The trick was to spawn the chairlift so it crossed the red line at the exact same time as the skiier.

Before I go into detail about how well I did at this job, I'd like to take this opportunity to apologise to all those skiers I crippled. This game was tougher than it looked. If you didn't time pressing the 'spawn chairlift' button and the passing of the villager perfectly, then the chairlift would just smack into the villager, knocking them down into the filthy snow, before heading up the mountain without them.

I made a surprising amount of money, considering I didn't once manage to successfully get a villager in a chairlift. This wasn't all my fault - even attempts the game calls 'Perfect!' still show the villager getting hit with the chairlift. Maybe they mean a 'Perfect!' hit?

As my timing improved, so did my bank balance. Maybe I should become a chairlift operator full time? But then I considered how many angry skiiers were probably limping up to the complaints booth to find out where I lived. I decided this wasn't the career path for me and that it was time to move on to another part of the resort. Quickly.

Running away from the Life Operator game (er, did they mean, Lift Operator?), I finally came across a ski slope. All right! Skiing here I CLOSED. Oh, come on! Turns out the resort closes at night. Grumbling bitterly about how I'd let people skii unsupervised in pitch black conditions if I was in charge, I went to find somewhere to sleep for the night. I really didn't want to have to build a bed out of snow, like on my last holiday. Don't ask.

Thunder crashed. Lightning struck. Tom screamed. Desperate for shelter, I ran into a shop, one that promised to UPGRADE SKI BOOTS. Hopefully they could upgrade mine into a hotel room.

A man called Dave was working the counter, by which I mean he was staring in the wrong direction and jumping up and down. O... K...

This shop was too rich for my holiday budget anyway. The Tier 4 ski boots cost $1000! I don't even want to think about how many skiers I'd have to hit with chairlifts to make that kind of money.

Leaving Dave's shop one unhappy customer, I saw a building marked 'apartments'. Finally! The door was wide open, as was one to a cosy room with a lovely double bed. I didn't see anyone asking for payment and frankly I was too tired to care. I slept like a baby, a baby who was having vivid nightmares about an apartment owner screaming them awake and demanding they leave before they call the police. Babies are weird.

I woke up shortly before the resort was due to open, and snuck out. A whole day gone. My holiday almost over.

Now I'm a pretty patient man. I can wait up to a whole minute for this website to load before throwing my computer on the floor and screaming, and I've waited hours in restaurants for my food to arrive before throwing my computer at the waiter and screaming. But I'd lost an ENTIRE DAY of my vacation without any skiing!

Well I wasn't willing to spend another second not falling down a mountain. I ran through the resort, my eyes on the hunt for some hot skiing action. AHA! A ski lift!

Now we're getting somewhere!

Several chairlift rides later, a long way up the mountain, I find another mini-game, TERRAIN PARK. You had to run down the slopes and then leap off the jumps, getting as much air as you can. But these jumps weren't that high - only a few blocks tall. The thrill-seeker in me was disappointed, but at least the coward in me was happy.

I decided to try it. What's the worst that could happen?

There I was, flying without wings, looking down on the resort like a GOD. "Bow to me, foolish humans!" I cackled. And now to execute the perfect landing!

Wait, how do you execute a landing?

Well.

Not like this.

I hit the snow sideways, and continued speeding down the slope. Every bone in my body considered leaving it. My eyes shot into the back of my skull and cowered under my brain. I bit my tongue so hard I could taste the inside of my teeth (pleasantly minty). I screamed in agony in sixteen different languages, fifteen of which don't exist. And on I tumbled, freefalling through the snow.

I felt pain in places I never knew I had. Heard bones crack in bits of me I'm pretty sure aren't meant to have bones in. My chest was pummeled, my elbows snapped, my back cracked, my face ruined, my little toes... actually, completely unharmed. They were the lucky ones.

Then, at last, I reached the end of the slope with a sickening CRUNCH. What was left of my attempted a gasp. A broken heap of a boy, no longer a proud mountain man. I knew it wouldn't be long before I passed out. I had to act fast. With the last of my strength, I crawled up to the chairlift and got on. I lost conciousness, knowing I'd be at the top of the course when I woke up. No way was I missing out on another go.

Skiing is fantastic.

But don't just take my word for it. If you haven't grasped this by now, I'm an idiot. Try minimumwagecraft's excellent resort for yourself here!