Lotwick Hill | Ep. 1 – Good Morning, Lotwick Hill! Your Money Is Safe With Me. Mostly.
A brand-new series begins as we head into Lotwick Hill! We’re starting our adventure with the sort of reassuring financial promise that should immediately make everyone nervous. Come along for our first look at the game and discover whether trusting me with the money is a brilliant idea or an administrative disaster waiting to happen.
Tonight, we’re getting an early look at a new town-building game from solo developer Lasse Bjørge, ahead of its release on Friday, 16 October 2026. It’s his first game, and I have to say I really enjoyed it.
As always, even when a developer kindly provides a game for us to play, my opinions remain entirely my own. If something works well, I’ll say so, and if something could be improved, we’ll have a look at that too.
🏙️ About the Game — Building Our Business Empire
Lotwick Hill is a town-building and business management game that reminds me very much of Monopoly Tycoon from 2001. You could almost describe it as a modern, upgraded version of that game, with a lovely visual style and plenty of businesses to manage.
Starting in the 1930s, we can lease property around a living harbour city, build shops, set prices, manage stock and compete with rival businesses for customers. There are property auctions, changing weather, a day-and-night cycle and plenty of decisions about where to invest our money.
As the decades pass, different types of shops become available, reflecting changes in technology and customer tastes. Eventually, we can develop apartments, hotels and more modern businesses, including internet cafés.
You can find Lotwick Hill on Steam, where you can check its availability and add it to your wishlist. Lotwick Hill is priced at £20.29 with a launch sale price of £16.23 with the Offer ending on 30ᵗʰ October 2026.
🗺️ Where We Are in the Journey — Our First Steps into Lotwick Hill
This is our very first episode, so we’re starting with absolutely nothing and learning how the game works. We haven’t established an empire yet, although knowing me, that probably won’t stop us from trying to build half the town straight away.
We’ll begin with the tutorial before moving into our first proper challenge, Local Rivalry, where we’ll be competing against the AI business owners.
The question is whether we can figure out all the different management systems quickly enough to build a profitable business, or whether my enthusiasm for putting down shops will get us into financial trouble.
💰 What Happens in This Episode — Shops, Auctions and Almost Bankruptcy
We started the evening by jumping into a brand-new game, before quickly deciding that perhaps showing everyone the tutorial first might be a sensible idea. There was quite a lot happening on screen, and with so many menus, buildings and management options available, it seemed worth understanding what we were supposed to be doing before attempting to take over the town.
The tutorial introduced us to our first block of land, where we started building a bakery and a bookshop while getting familiar with the controls. Each building has its own minimum size requirements, and we soon discovered that there was considerably more to managing a shop than simply putting it down and waiting for the customers. We could adjust selling prices, control how much stock was ordered, monitor expenses and investigate what people living in the surrounding neighbourhoods actually wanted.
There was also the day-and-night cycle to consider. Different businesses open at different times, meaning the town continues trading well into the evening. Our little pie shop was attracting customers during the night, which was rather entertaining to watch. Stock only arrives the following morning, though, so if a shop sells everything during the day, it has to wait until the next delivery before trading properly again.
Initially, all these systems felt a little overwhelming, especially with so much information appearing in the various menus. At one point, I spent ages trying to work out where the current stock levels were displayed because several of our businesses had sold out. When the following morning arrived and the shops restocked, I finally spotted the information sitting right in front of me. I’ve no idea how I managed to miss it earlier.
With the tutorial completed, we moved into our first proper challenge on easy difficulty, starting with £9,000 and what could generously be described as a flexible business strategy. We began with some basic shops, including a bakery, bookshop, coffee shop, newsagent and doctor’s office, before gradually expanding into fish shops, pie shops and anything else that looked useful.
The building system became something of a game of Tetris. Each shop needed enough room to fit onto a plot, and I was determined to squeeze as many different businesses into our available space as possible. We canvassed neighbouring areas to see which services were in demand, although I must admit that occasionally I was more interested in putting down another shop than worrying about whether anyone actually wanted it.
Naturally, the AI competitors weren’t going to leave us alone. One of them even had the cheek to build a toy shop on a plot we had been eyeing up. Gary was offering some sensible advice about considering customer demand and profitability, while I was busy working out how we could steal customers from the competition. We also discovered that there were several rival business owners operating around town, including the Undertaker and another competitor we rather conveniently started calling Steve.
Expanding our little empire meant getting involved in property auctions, which provided another learning experience. I spent a while looking around for the auction room before realising that the auction countdown wasn’t progressing because I had paused the game. Once we got the bidding underway, we started securing leases on neighbouring plots, gradually opening up more areas where we could build.
One of the more entertaining moments came when we received a notification that a special bus was heading towards a nearby ironmonger’s. Rather than simply watch our competitor benefit from all those extra customers, we decided to open our own ironmonger’s directly beside it and considerably lower our prices.
The bus eventually arrived with confetti flying everywhere, bringing its passengers into the area. I’m still not entirely sure whether we managed to outsell the neighbouring shop, but our own business was making money, which was encouraging. Later, we even managed to buy out the competing business and repurpose it, removing another little obstacle from our expanding commercial empire.
There were a few other unexpected events around town too. A lemonade-selling competition appeared, giving us the opportunity to experiment with another little business challenge. Unfortunately, I don’t think we managed to win that one, and I wasn’t entirely convinced that all our settings had applied properly. The Undertaker appeared to come away with the victory, so hopefully we’ll have another opportunity to try that event in a future game.
Meanwhile, one of the city-owned ironmonger’s shops developed a water leak, which became even more entertaining when we spotted a bird on the roof. Later, the same building caught fire, prompting some rather suspicious discussions about insurance jobs. Between the rival businesses, unexpected incidents and changing customer demand, there was certainly plenty happening around town.
Of course, the gameplay wasn’t the only source of entertainment. entertainjd launched one of our Hunger Games rounds, with several members of the community volunteering as tributes. cheesecollector31 emerged victorious, defeating me in the process and apparently claiming the comfiest chair. As Cheese pointed out, cheese always wins.
We also had plenty of the usual conversations with everyone dropping into chat. Samwise was talking about Halloween decorations and an earlier Lord of the Rings theme that hardly anyone had recognised, while Happy Cat reported that reviewing the previous night’s audio hadn’t revealed any ghosts. There was also a discussion about my visit to CeX, where I had managed to get distracted buying a few inexpensive retro games when I was supposed to be posting JD’s parcel.
Tea inevitably became another important subject. We discovered that the game gradually introduces different types of shops as the decades progress, although we’d have to wait quite some time before proper tea rooms became available. Gary suggested a boba tea shop, which led to a conversation about the little pearls in those drinks. Samwise and Mr V weren’t especially convinced by the idea, particularly once tapioca had been compared to frog spawn.
One of the features I particularly enjoyed was watching the town change over time. As the years advance, new businesses become available to reflect the period you’re playing in. Eventually, you can start building things such as record shops, computer shops, video rental businesses and internet cafés. I really like the idea of watching a small collection of early shops develop into a much more modern city, with different businesses appearing as customer tastes change.
While exploring, I also discovered that we could select individual customers and follow them around the town. We watched one shopper visit the ironmonger’s before heading home, which was a nice little feature. It also reinforced something I’d love to see added in the future: a proper first-person view where we could walk around the streets and explore the businesses we’ve built. You can already zoom in quite close, so being able to wander around the city ourselves would be a lovely addition.
There were, however, a few interface frustrations along the way. Clicking on different blocks caused the camera to jump rather abruptly around the map, and on several occasions I managed to lose the area where we’d been building. It would help if the map made it clearer which plots belonged to us and where our businesses were located.
The scrolling behaviour was another issue that kept catching me out. When moving through a menu of available buildings, reaching the bottom didn’t stop the mouse wheel from doing anything. Instead, further scrolling started zooming the camera in and out, which could become quite disorientating. I would much rather the menu simply stopped scrolling until the cursor moved back over the game world.
We also had a look through the settings, where I felt a few improvements would be worthwhile. More graphical options and a built-in frame-rate limiter would be useful, even though the game wasn’t particularly demanding on my system. The sound settings also seemed unnecessarily complicated, combining a four-position master volume control with separate sliders and decibel figures. Personally, I’d prefer straightforward sliders for all three audio controls.
There were a couple of little graphical clipping issues as well, including the large Lotwick Hill sign cutting through the hillside. Later, during our victory celebrations, some of the characters cheering from the windows were clipping through the scenery. None of these problems spoiled the experience, but they’re the sort of things that would be nice to see tidied up.
We even took a short break from managing our businesses to show Jim the Raspberry Pi night-sky camera project I’ve been working on. That included looking through some infrared footage, the image gallery and the controls for reviewing recordings, along with a few of the additional features I’m developing. It was a brief diversion from the business empire, but an enjoyable opportunity to show everyone how the project was progressing.
Back in Lotwick Hill, our expansion continued. More auctions opened up new plots, and we gradually moved into an area further north, close to a rather impressive bank. By this stage, the available buildings were becoming more interesting, and we started adding higher-quality businesses, including jewellery shops and restaurants, alongside more ordinary shops.
We also moved into property development, putting down residential buildings and a hotel as we attempted to increase the value of our growing empire. With more space available and the years advancing, we could begin thinking beyond the original little block where everything had started.
It was around this point that we noticed the year had reached 1955. That was when I finally remembered something rather important: we hadn’t actually checked what the challenge wanted us to achieve.
After spending most of the evening building anything we could fit onto the map, we finally looked at the objective and discovered that Local Rivalry required us to finish ahead of the AI competitors in total value by 1960. With only five in-game years remaining, this might have been a good thing to check a little earlier.
Fortunately, our enthusiastic building strategy appeared to have worked rather well. We’d been generating plenty of income, winning property auctions and expanding faster than the competition. Despite not paying much attention to the actual objective, it looked as though we might already be in a strong enough position to win.
There was, however, one last financial problem waiting for us.
After spending more money on the hotel, residential blocks and other buildings, our account slipped into a negative balance. The game warned that if we remained overdrawn for another day, we would be declared bankrupt. Considering the episode’s promise that everyone’s money was perfectly safe with me, the timing couldn’t have been much better.
Rather than risk putting down another building, we decided to leave everything alone for a day. We increased the game speed to four times normal and allowed our existing businesses to carry on trading. Thankfully, the money started coming back in, and we made enough profit to pull ourselves comfortably out of trouble.
That turned out to be rather fortunate, because the following year was 1960, and the challenge came to an end.
Against all expectations, we’d won!
Our little business empire finished ahead of the competition, completing the first Local Rivalry challenge. We were treated to a victory celebration with a bus travelling through the streets and fireworks lighting up the sky. Chat even triggered additional fireworks through the stream overlay, giving the whole occasion a rather fitting send-off.
I was genuinely pleased with how it turned out. What began as a slightly overwhelming collection of menus and unfamiliar systems had gradually become something I felt comfortable managing. By the end, I understood much more about how the different businesses worked, how to expand into neighbouring areas and how to keep the money coming in.
More importantly, I’d had a lot of fun playing it.
For a first game from solo developer Lasse Bjørge, I think Lotwick Hill is a really enjoyable experience. It has a lovely visual style, charming little characters wandering around the town, and that familiar tycoon-game feeling that makes you want to keep expanding just a little bit further. There are some interface and settings improvements I’d definitely recommend, but the actual gameplay was thoroughly entertaining.
By the end of the stream, Gary and Mr Smith had both added the game to their Steam wishlists. Mr Smith enjoyed seeing it so much that he even downloaded the original Monopoly Tycoon from 2001 afterwards and showed me on Discord. Looking back at that older game, it still holds up surprisingly well, and you can certainly see why Lotwick Hill appeals to fans of that style of management game.
With the first challenge complete, we decided that was a good place to wrap things up for the evening. We thanked everyone for joining us before heading over to AVissie for our closing raid.
Lotwick Hill will definitely be returning, whether that’s during another livestream or while I’m playing off stream. There are more challenges to explore, different ways to configure the competition, and the possibility of building an empire that stretches right across the city and into the modern day.
And after discovering that our rather questionable strategy of building almost everything had actually won the first challenge, I’m looking forward to finding out just how far we can take it.
🎬 Watch the Episode — Our First Lotwick Hill Adventure
If you’d like to see how our first attempt at running a business empire turned out, you can watch the full Lotwick Hill episode here.
You can also follow the series through the Lotwick Hill playlist, or explore more of my gameplay videos over on my YouTube channel.
If you enjoy the episode, please consider leaving a like, sharing your thoughts in the comments and subscribing. I’d be interested to hear whether you’ve played the original Monopoly Tycoon, and what you think of Lotwick Hill.
🔴 Join the Adventure Live — Help Me Keep the Town Profitable
Building a business empire is considerably more entertaining when everyone is there offering advice, pointing out the problems I’ve missed and occasionally watching me spend money on another shop we probably don’t need.
You can join us live on Twitch or YouTube, where there’s always something different happening.
Whether we’re discovering new games, revisiting old favourites or narrowly avoiding bankruptcy, you’re more than welcome to come along and join the conversation.
🤝 Community & Links — There’s Always Room for Another Shopkeeper
The stream might finish for the evening, but the community continues between games. Whether you’re looking for more videos, want to share what you’ve been playing or would simply like to say hello, there are plenty of places to find us.
Live — Come along when the next business opens its doors:
Twitch | YouTube
Community — Join the conversations, share your adventures and keep up with what’s happening:
Discord
Socials — Follow the smaller updates, clips and conversations between streams:
TikTok | Bluesky | Instagram | Facebook | Threads | X
Music — There’s always something playing in the background while we work on our next project:
Spotify | Apple Music
Support — If you’d like to help support the channel and everything we’re building together:
Fourthwall | Teespring | Streamlabs
More — Beyond gaming, you can explore my other projects, services and articles:
Business Centre | Download the Brochure | About Me | Blog
🎆 From Nearly Bankrupt to Winning the Town
Our first visit to Lotwick Hill turned out rather well. We went from struggling to understand the menus to building a profitable little empire, nearly bankrupting ourselves and somehow completing the first challenge with a victory celebration.
I really enjoyed this one, and I’m looking forward to seeing what else the game has to offer. There are plenty more buildings to unlock, rival businesses to compete against and areas of town waiting for us to develop.
Hopefully, next time I’ll remember to read the challenge objectives before we’re almost finished.
Thanks for joining me, everyone, and I’ll see you on the next stream!
— Dr Ravenholm
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