In This New Ski Resort Game, You Don't Just Build Resorts. You Ski Them.

Do Patrick and Maverick Wilkinson like working together?

It was a reasonable question for the father-and-son duo, I thought, because they’d spent the past several months toiling on a video game, going back and forth about features and gameplay. Surely, there was some friction.

“You should probably ask him without me here,” said Patrick, the dad, mining for a laugh.

He got one, but Maverick interjected and offered a sincere answer. 

“There’s a very special kind of work environment when you’re working with somebody that you share that family bond with,” he said, noting his response would be the same whether Patrick was sitting alongside him or not. “I confide in my dad as my boss, but also as my dad.”

The Wilkinsons’ soon-to-be-released project (you can find it on November 10, 2026, on Steam), Powder Park, is a family business. It spans two generations and, over the decades, connects to one of the first games Patrick ever made in 2000, Ski Resort Tycoon. 

But Patrick and Maverick decided to do more than revive that throwback gem. While Powder Park shares similarities with Ski Resort Tycoon by tasking players with building a ski resort, it takes a turn once they place the lifts, sculpt the trails, and select freestyle features. Rather than only watching NPC skiers shred the slopes, players can drop in on their creation, too, choosing skis or a snowboard.

The idea budded when Maverick developed a “snowboard controller”—that is, the fundamentals of a snowboarding video game. From there, he and Patrick began planning Powder Park, which at first was slated to involve a detailed resort management simulation.

The two decided, though, to keep that side of the game light and user-friendly. They didn’t want building a resort to feel like a chore. The game, then, doesn’t involve laying sewer lines or fretting about bankruptcy. 

Part of that approach involved touches that make it fun to hang out in the digital, customizable mountains. Off the slopes, players can find interactive ferris wheels, ice rinks, and snowball arenas. For comic relief, throwing a snowball at a snowman spawns another evil snowman that attacks the player.

All of this can be enjoyed with friends who, through a multiplayer function, can slide down and work on each other’s resorts, making for joint creations. And yes, you can hit someone with one of those snowballs and knock them off the chairlift.

“It’s super ridiculous, but that’s where the game is,” said Maverick. “We made it. We love it, and we want people to see it in the way that we see it because it is really a piece of us.”

Patrick admitted that, without his son’s input, Powder Park would have gone more in the simulator direction. He has experience in that department, after all.

Raised in Alaska, Patrick grew up Nordic skiing, and one of his first jobs was running a ski area rope tow. For fun, he’d design ski areas on graph paper, a hobby that became more real after he co-founded the game development studio Cat Daddy Games. Among their first projects were Ski Resort Tycoon and its sequels—Ski Resort Tycoon II and Ski Resort Extreme—all of which dug into the nitty-gritty of the resort business.

Those early days were a grind. Patrick remembered sleeping in the office and going home a few nights a week to have dinner with his family while he worked on the first Tycoon.

“I was eating Ritz crackers with cheese at the time. You know, all good here,” said Maverick. “If you believe it, I still wanted to get into video games after seeing that experience.”

But when Maverick graduated from college about a year and a half ago after studying game development, the employment prospects looked dim. Like many other white-collar sectors, hiring in his chosen field has frozen up, with one recent survey finding that one-third of workers in the U.S. video game industry were laid off in the past two years.

That was another catalyst for Patrick and Maverick going into business together. It also presented a full-circle moment for Patrick. A large publisher bought Cat Daddy in the 2000s and, over the years, Patrick moved further and further away from game design, becoming more of a businessman.

Now, after retiring from Cat Daddy and founding the studio behind Powder Park, Cat’s Eye, he said he’s doing the “best parts” again: “making games.”

“I’m demoting myself to, you know, a technical engineer,” said Patrick, chuckling. 

To build the passion project, he and Maverick drew on their network, assembling a team of 12 who’ve chipped in different ways. Maverick brought in a college buddy. The best friend of Patrick’s youngest sons built the controller inputs. Patrick has worked for over two decades with the guy doing Powder Park’s character modeling. Some of the crew, like Maverick, are recent graduates in the tumultuous market, while others lost their previous jobs.

At the core of Cat’s Eye, though, is a dad and his son. They go out for walks each day and spend the entire time discussing Powder Park. Their parental relationship makes for a transparent working relationship—if one has an idea the other isn’t sure about, they feel confident sharing honest feedback.

During our interview, the two also talked excitedly about the little features they’ve added to the project together, like the marauding snowmen or a subtle nod to an old Super Mario game they played.

“We can just weave in those references that, to us, are fun,” said Patrick.

The 2026/27 print issue of POWDER Magazine is here. Click here to have a copy shipped to your front door. Copies can also be found on newsstands at major retailers like Barnes & Noble, Target, Walmart, and more.

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