The Making of Little Cities' Snowy Islands DLC

We spoke to Purple Yonder Co-Founder, Kelly Howard, about Little Cities’ Snowy Islands DLC and how they’ve been working to deliver some of the community’s biggest asks!

Little Cities continues to go from strength-to-strength, and hot on the heels of the Attractions update, we recently teased the next stage of our post-launch journey.

After much anticipation as to what exactly the “Stay Frosty” update would include, we are very excited to reveal the Snowy Islands DLC - available on the Meta Quest store right now for just $6.99/£4.99! Bundle up and get ready to cozy down with lots of snowy shenanigans...tis the season, after all. Below I've pulled some thoughts together of how your community feedback directly informs how we’re building the future of our VR city creator together.

Players can escape with Little Cities this December to a snowy retreat filled with snow-capped mountains, ski resorts, ice palaces, and all manner of wintry delights to discover. We’ve bundled up lots of cool new content to look forward to, including unique buildings, Attractions, surprising little moments, and even tiny, tiny penguins(!) to bring you an icy fresh Little Cities experience.

Our incredible community has been very vocal about how they’d like to see us build on the solid foundations of Little Cities, offering lots of valuable feedback that we have taken to heart and worked towards. More islands and additional natural disasters are some of the most requested features, so we’re delighted to announce the addition of two brand-new Snowy Islands for players to enjoy.

Although Little Cities focuses on cozy creation and relaxation, the snowy theme includes mechanics that will make life on the islands just that little more dicey for your residents. Avalanche disasters should peak your interest too! These can demolish buildings and block roads with piles of snow, so you’ll need to rebuild these parts of the city and clear a path to allow traffic (including emergency services and construction workers) to flow once again.

Juggling a growing city while fixing the destruction that disasters create adds an extra challenge for players, especially when the Archipelago Island has multiple mountains and avalanche zones! The snowy landscape also means there’s less water available, so players will have to strategically place water towers to grow their city and rely on new buildings, such as an unlockable water extraction drill, to keep residents hydrated.

We’ve put a great deal of effort into creating new unique buildings and bringing them to life with some fascinating and wholesome animations. Not only are these buildings aesthetically pleasing, but they have a direct impact on gameplay. Depending on where they are placed, they have a chance to boost the income or the happiness of residents, so get plotting!

We didn’t just stop at new buildings - it was very important for us to build on our previous updates in other meaningful ways. As well as being able to use the game’s existing Attractions in the new Snowy Islands DLC, players will now have brand new, wintry-themed Attractions to discover! Attractions offer players more freedom to style their cities. To max out the Style Rating system, players will also need to discover secret pairings to earn top marks! Can you find them all...?

With this new update, we wanted to keep the feeling of an idyllic holiday that Little Cities has become known for...but it wasn’t without challenges! We had to develop a snow effect that would cover all the buildings while keeping them immediately recognisable. This meant lots of testing to ensure every building and Attraction felt familiar and functional.

During the early stages of development, the avalanche disaster was a lot less challenging (sorry!). It didn’t have additional elements such as blocking traffic. Adding this in during playtesting meant the player was much more involved in the post-disaster cleanup, resulting in much more fun. It’s these touches, really engrossing the player in the interactivity, that makes the difference!

We’re so excited for our players to cozy up this winter with Little Cities, and we know that it’s the perfect pairing for you this holiday season! Community feedback has been so important to us, and we’d like to thank everyone who has helped build our VR city creator with us. The newest phase of our post-launch journey begins with the Snowy Islands DLC, but be sure to keep a lookout in early 2023 as we breathe new life into Little Cities with “itty bitty citizenry.” There’s so much to look forward to!

Little Cities is available on the Meta Quest and Meta Quest 2.