Bente Jorgensen appears to have set a precedent. Young men and women all over the world are setting out on travels of their own— ravenous for art, culture and some proper grub— only the most exquisite of destinations will do!

Fresh off the boat they hit the Hotels, springing open their cases, before jollying on down to the riverside for an Éclair, hoping to advance their broad-brims into all the most bijoux pockets of the Old World. Street mimes, artists, sophisticated-looking backgammon players drinking Montmartre 75s.

And then they see it… through the heaving crowds… a glimmer high, high above— a tower of iron, so wild and audacious, it could only be here, right here…

Tourists and Hotels

Tourists are a new Resident Tier in the Old World who stay in your city over night – in contrast to Visitors who only arrive for a day trip to see the most exciting cultural spots of your city.

First, you need to attract them and the basis for this is upgrading your Public Mooring. This can be done when reaching 500 Engineers.

Which means, that the next thing to do is building Hotels. These are imposing, elegant establishments which are expensive in construction and take up quite some space with their size of 9 by 7 tiles, but make up for it not only with their impressive looks but also with a capacity of up to 500 Tourists each.

In order to attract more Tourists and fill your Hotels to the brim, you will need to fulfil their exquisite needs. These are again split into Basic Needs and Happiness Needs and are a mix of existing and new products, the new food and drink venues, as well as cultural buildings like the Variety Theatre, the Zoo, or the Museum.

While you can easily spot the status of each need via the Hotel’s UI, there’s a change on how happiness impacts your new Tourist population:

The fulfilment of a need can be limited by their happiness. This is marked with an unhappy red icon next to the respective need and the info, to which percentage a need can be currently fulfilled. Possible causes for limits can be low island attractiveness or a lack of variety when it comes to Hot Spots like Museums. Solve these issues to make sure Tourists are willing to visit your island and to maximise the number of potential Tourists in your city.

Happy Tourists spend more money in your city – and since the pockets of these wealthy individuals are well-filled, it’s definitely worth fulfilling their demanding needs.

We said above that Tourists are a new Resident Tier. As part of that mechanic, they’re also providing a sort of “workforce” which we called “Customers”. These are essential for your Restaurants, Bars and Cafés which thrive on tourism. For them to work at 100% capacity, a certain number of Customers is required. If a venue lacks Customers, the buff to the surrounding residences is decreased – more on that in the next paragraph.

Lastly, we need to warn you that Tourists are a spoiled, demanding bunch (let’s not say “lazy”) and absolutely no fans of long walks. So, in order to fulfil their needs, you will need to set up a complete bus network on your island with Bus Stops next to all important places. We’ll go into detail on the bus system later in this DevBlog.

Restaurants, Cafés and Bars

So, we created a place to stay for our Tourists. But as mentioned above, they’re rather more demanding than your regular Visitors, and having an attractive island with a Zoo or a Museum is not enough.

When staying for several days, culinary needs naturally become a matter of great import, which makes the Tourist’s request for Restaurants, Cafés and Bars quite understandable.

All three buildings function in a similar way to Public Service buildings but in a more challenging way since they use the new recipe system and therefore combine production and public service. Based on the recipe you choose, the building will prepare a dish, dessert or drink and fulfil the Tourists’ needs while also providing a boost to regular residences in a certain area. Let’s take a closer look:

“We had Flour, Sugar and Chocolate but could not bake a cake – that always floated around in our heads when thinking about new content. The recipe system solves this and allows us to combine goods to new products that would otherwise be too specific for our normal needs system.”

– Dominik, Game Designer

As you can see, each recipe requires certain ingredients – so make sure you got a Warehouse not too far away. Some recipes might require ingredients from different sessions, while others have ingredients that are easier to obtain. Since we’re always looking for a) new systems to try out and b) ways to spice up your gameplay with new features, we came up with the recipe system as a new challenge.

All recipes fulfil the Tourists’ need for Restaurants, Cafés or Bars in the same way – they will enjoy any of the delicious dishes you can present them with. However, the aforementioned boost to the surrounding residents varies: If your Restaurant, for example, serves the “Archduke’s Schnitzel” then your surrounding residents will receive a +3 boost to their happiness while consuming less Bread, Fish and Chocolate. If you choose the “Stroggof Goulash”, nearby residents receive a +2 happiness boost and consume less Fish, Sausage and Canned Food.

Restaurant placement as well as choosing recipes based on the required ingredients and the surrounding residences (with their respective needs) should provide you with a nice puzzle challenge if you love optimization.

Selecting any of these three types of buildings will display their influence radius with a circle, while the affected residences are additionally highlighted.

More recipes are unlocked either via quests from the Tourist or by fulfilling certain conditions: Have a look at the recipe book for details.

Orchards and Chemical Plant

Of course, using only existing goods to fulfil the needs of your Tourists and for the creation of delicious new dishes would be… boring? So, let us introduce you to two new production buildings: The Orchard and the Chemical Plant.

Orchards produce new agricultural goods which are either directly fulfilling the Tourists’ needs (Jam) or are functioning as input goods for recipes. They function similarly to your Lumberjack’s Huts by planting trees in an area around them. You do not have to build fields like you do for a Red Pepper Farm or a Vineyard, which would have required a rework of the existing system so that modules or farm fields can be upgraded or would automatically change. Lumberjack huts already had such a system in place where they modify their surroundings by growing trees, the new goods all required trees, and so using this system was the much more fitting way.

Not all the special new ingredients can be grown in the Old World, though, so you will have to make some space in the New World to also build Orchards there. Only then can you produce goods like Cinnamon, Camphor Wax or Citrus Fruits for new products like Shampoo or Lemonade. More on that in a second.

Similar to Restaurants, Orchards are also using a recipe system, where you can select the seed you want the respective Orchard to grow from a catalogue. However, Orchards don’t need any input goods.

Also using the recipe system is the Chemical Plant. Patents for three new consumer goods are available to you, all three products are highly requested by your Tourists. Produce fruity Lemonade (using Saltpetre, Sugar and Citrus Fruits), soapy Shampoo (using Soap, Cinnamon and Coconut Butter) and Souvenirs (using Glass, Camphor Wax and Cotton) to make your Tourists happy.

Both the Orchards as well as the Chemical Plant need a Warehouse nearby to gather input goods and deliver their finished products.

Bus System

As mentioned at the beginning of this blog, it’s not enough to simply have a great Zoo or a five-star restaurant: Tourists are demanding and don’t want to travel too far on foot. This is where the bus system comes into play.

Bus Stops have to be placed at all important places in your city which Tourists want to visit. This starts with your Public Mooring and Hotels and extends to places like Variety Theatres, Restaurants, Bars and your Museum. When placing a Bus Stop, you will have to pay attention to two influence radiuses: For a building to be reachable by the Tourists, it has to be in the circle radius. This means, if your Zoo is outside this circle, it’s not part of your Bus Network and the Zoo need for your Tourists will not be fulfilled.

The second indicator you have to keep an eye on is the green street overlay: This marks the overall reach of your Bus Network. For a Bus Stop to be connected to the network, its green overlay has to overlap with the existing network.

Since tourists aren’t fans of long travels when seeing all your city’s marvels, a need’s fulfilment level can be reduced if the distance between Hotel and the respective venue is too far. Keep an eye on the needs overview of each hotel to spot these kinds of problems.

We have covered the bus system in detail in last week’s blog. So, if you want to get some additional insights, make sure to check it out!

The Iron Tower

Nothing impresses your Tourists more than monuments (except maybe for an Archduke’s Schnitzel), so it’s only logical to give you a completely new monument to build: The Iron Tower. Like other monuments, it’s constructed in three stages and, when finished, not only increases your island’s attractiveness but also provides another option to buff surrounding residences. “La Reine”, the finest restaurant in the land, offers three unique recipes to choose from, each providing a strong buff and reducing the consumption of specific goods, but requiring four ingredients each instead of the usual three. Who could say no to the “Trifle Tower”, the probably most majestic of all desserts?

There’s one more special feature about the Iron Tower: By assigning additional Tourist Customers to it, you can greatly increase the influence radius of its buff. When placed at a central location, it might even cover your whole city…

And let’s not forget that such an extravagant monument might indeed attract royal attention.

Last but not least…

As it is now tradition, “Tourist Season” will also come with a beautiful bunch of themed ornaments fitting to the setting. Build a Souvenir Shop, Lookout Point, Signposts, Flowerbeds, and more to turn your cities into authentic tourist hot spots.

And as usual, we will release a free Game Update alongside the “Tourist Season” DLC featuring several quality-of-life improvements as well as bug fixes. We’ll have the full Release Notes for you next week, so stay tuned for more details on that.

Finally, for your chance to get some first-hand info from the devs, you should not miss our live stream on the “Tourist Season” release day, May 25^th, from 5 to 6 PM CEST (11 AM – 12 PM EDT). Mark it in your calendars!