Last month, Habbo teased us with a new update – SnowStorm is returning! It’s now been officially deployed to the sandbox and players there are giving it a good ol’ test.

But did you know that SnowStorm has actually been around since 2000?

Click Read More to find out more about the history of this classic returning game.

Lumisota

Let’s start with a flashback to 2000. Sulake was enjoying some success from its first game, Mobiles Disco, and decided to launch a new interactive game – and thus Lumisota (Finnish for Snow War) was born. The game allowed players to join teams and throw snowballs at players to get points. It even included a lobby. All of these features were included when it was integrated into Habbo, although they looked a little different!

Learn more about Lumisota on our Wiki

2006: Snowstorm hits Habbo!

The game was introduced to Habbo in late 2006/early 2007. Many European hotels were the lucky first to have it, and it was launched on the .co.uk, .com and .ca hotels in January 2007. You had to buy gaming tickets to play – 2c for 5 tickets. Leaderboards meant Habbos could earn badges.

Gaming tickets were already in use for the other popular classic Habbo games – Battle Ball, Lido Diving and Wobble Squabble. SnowStom was the last big official game.

SnowStorm was very well received with the community, with many players signing up for accounts on foreign hotels to get early practice in.

2009 – 2010: Removal and Freeze!

When the old Shockwave hotel was closed down and the Flash client introduced in 2009, SnowStorm was not one of the features that was initially included. SnowStorm was still a popular game, and many users were upset at its removal. In response, the Freeze! range of game furniture was developed and released in 2010.

As well as new furniture including scoreboards, timers and team gates, there was also a range of achievements.

I personally LOVED Freeze – I saved up for ages to get loads of tiles and hosted regular games in my Fire’s Fabulous Freeze room. Why didn’t I ever take any screenshots?

2011: Snowstorm Shuffle

Freeze didn’t have too long in the limelight before Habbo decided to reintroduce it, in December 2011. It was brought back under the name SnowStorm Shuffle.

Originally only available for VIPs (who remembers when VIP was a thing?), this new version of the game lasted 3 years until the Game Centre was finally removed from the Hotel.

Shortly after launch, Habbo also recreated the SnowStorm Lobby as a Public Room.

2021: Return!

In March, Habbo teased us with a Tweet about the return of SnowStorm. Many of us thought it might be a really early April Fools – but staff confirmed it was real shortly after.

On 2 April, Habbo devs Johno and Macklebee and Olsoweir joined beta testers on the Sandbox hotel for a live stream testing out SnowStorm. You can watch that stream back here.

Bring on the snowballs!

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