Winter is the quietest and most peaceful time of the year. Nature lies beneath a soft, white blanket, sleeping in gentle stillness. Snowflakes dance through the air like tiny, sparkling stars, quietly settling on the ground. Forget your worries for a moment and enjoy a warming mulled wine at the festively decorated Christmas market or an exciting train ride through the snowy landscape.
– Frost Peak About Land
Occupying a Homestead region, Frost Peak offers exactly what its About Land deception states: a winter’s setting rich in snow and opportunities to forget worries, relax and take photos, wander a little market or ride a train through the surrounding woods.
Designed by Yoyo Collas with the help of AmyDenise, the region near seamlessly blends itself with the outlying surrounds to present a place nestled within high mountains. The Landing Point sits towards the eastern end of the landscape (itself laid-out roughly east-to-west), where steps lead up to an arched entranceway passing under a grand festive tree.
At the foot of these steps is the first opportunity for photography – a horse-drawn sleigh with sitting for individuals or couples. A further place to pose can be found just across the track from the sleigh, in the form of a little glass-canopied bench and where a white stag watches over a small herd of deer.
Stand close the tracks long enough, and an open-topped train will clatter past, hauling a line of open-topped little carriages. Mindful somewhat of Stevenson’s Rocket (albeit with a cow-catcher on the front!), the little train huffs and puffs itself around an oval of track passing through the outer sides of the region at a speed that makes hopping on and off very easy.
The train is a good way to see the outlying woodlands of the region and the wildlife therein – bears, fawns, deer – and pass by the cosy home at the western extent of the land (and which appears open to the public if you fancy popping inside and warming yourself up). The tracks will also take visitors past a bridge and a deck which both provide access to the ice-skating track area.
Broad enough for ice dance around the little island in its midst, and close to the deck and below the slope leading up to the house, this frozen part of the setting throws two smooth arms around the middle of the landscape, possibly allowing a race or two around it, the route carrying skaters under the Landing Point’s huge tree in the process.
Passing through the tunnel under this tree from the Landing Point brings visitors to the Christmas / Winter market set within the innermost oval of the land, walls around most of it lifting it above the ice skating, other than at its western end where the snow-covered ground slopes gently down to the ice, a road also curling tail-like around it it from the market or offer a path from one to the other.
The market is home to a range of stalls and little shops, together with fairground rides, places to sit and plenty of life. One of the rides is a novel carousel in which the riders’ seating and mounts remain still, and the rest of the carousel itself slowly revolves around them! A curio it might be, but it also fits within the setting.
The life and liveliness comes in the form of static NPCs who are set as if wandering the stalls, seated in conversation, bartering over snacks, taking phots, and so on. They are joined by a couple of cats who look to be about to have a disagreement, and the local Elf and welfare team taking a break from sweeping the snow from the cobbles, before they make their way gnome (sorry! 😀 ), while pigeons and stags round-out the animal representative and snowmen keep their eyes on things.
The NPCs in the market aren’t the only ones to be found here, as those who ride / follow the train tracks will discover – folk are out for a walk around the tracks as well, while those looking for little places to sit and pass the time might want to seek out the old cable car cabin as it sits out on the ice or perhaps the cosy little forest shed across the ice from it, and watched over by a friendly owl.
Rich in details, easy on the eye, Frosty Peak is well put together to make a nicely relaxing visit.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 