Roller coaster sims have made a bit of a resurgence lately, and Park Beyond is up next. This new park builder from Bandai Namco and Limbic Entertainment aims to recapture the sense of wonder and charm amusements parks are known for. First popularized by the Roller Coaster Tycoon series, the genre has become a cult classic. These games are magnets for imaginative minds and number-crunching nerds due to their management and creativity aspects.
On that end, Park Beyond has many things to offer. But it is undeniable that the game also faces stiff competition in the market. Games like Frontier Development’s Planet Coaster and Texel Raptor’s Parkitecht are popular. Does Park Beyond manage to surpass them, or is it a ride worth holding off on?
Build the park of your dreams in Park Beyond
Park Beyond’s two key attractions are the single player Campaign and the Sandbox. The latter puts players in the shoes of a budding Visioneer – an overseer, manager, and owner of a brand-new theme park. Guided by a colorful cast of characters, the story mode is all about getting to grips with the basics of gameplay. This is where they will understand how to create coasters, put down establishments like eateries, oversee the park’s profit margins, and more.
Characters like Phil, the businessman, and a sidekick name Blaize will guide players. The whole campaign is divided into eight missions, each featuring various objectives players must complete to progress. Voiced cutscenes also punctuate each mission, although the animation does tend to delve into the uncanny territory. Even if that is dismissable, the cheesy writing overall just made me want to skip through the dialogue.
Thankfully players will spend most of their time customizing the park. The initial few chapters act as tutorials, further touching down on management basics, like hiring staff and setting up shops. In fact, pretty much most of the fundamentals seen in other theme park management sims are accounted for. The main goal is to turn this sparse park into a bastion of fun, packed with exciting rides and enjoyable vibes for visitors. This is done by raising the Park Level by making several investments.
To do so, there are three key factors to consider: Fun, Money, and Amazement. Fun determines how much customers enjoy their time in the park. This is determined by the variety and the types of rides available. Money is the key income used to keep the business running as well as pay salaries, invest in upgrades, and more. This is done by setting up food and drink shops as well as toilets and benches for customers’ comfort.
Visitors are divided into Teens, Adults, and Families, each with their own likes and dislikes. Keeping visitors happy by managing each group is required as unhappy customers can send the business spiraling into a loss. Continuous losses over a period of 3 months will result in a Game Over scenario. Using the Heat Map to track the park and visitors’ needs and wants is paramount to success.
Finally, Amazement is also a resource generated from visitors and used to buff facilities and hire staff. This can mean turning rides into crazier versions by means of “Impossification.”This also means a simple Pendulum ride can detach its spinning wheels to spin in mid-air before automatically attaching to the pendulum component.
Clearly, this, among many other Impossifications, would be room for an illegal safety hazard in real-life. But that’s what Park Beyond is about: the impossible
Thrills and chills
The crux of the gameplay is keeping the rides open while striking a balance between profit and customer appeal to keep the show running. There are an impressive number of options to manage this. Players can tweak design, color, and music not only for the rides but also for the stores. In fact, it is even possible to create custom buildings and props brick by brick and decorate the environment to an impressive level.
However, the biggest aspect of Park Beyond is coaster creation. Players will start off with a coaster base and then use a series of tracks to create loops, twirls, and more. The controls are easy to get used to and well implemented. Players must also factor in physics, like momentum, to ensure the ride comes along fine. To help with this, a ghostly trail showcases the speed and location of how an actual ride would move over the track, so players can implement changes as desired.
If players find the coaster creation too complex and simply wish to enjoy the management, then there are pre-built options to pick from as well. Players can also invest in R&D to establish new shops and rides to further entice customers. At the end of the day, creative players can make some truly astounding roller coasters using this toolset. But things are not all sunshine and warm cocoa.
It will not take long for genre veterans to realize how many coaster type and customization options are missing, even compared to older 3D Roller Coaster Tycoon games. Perhaps these will arrive in future updates, but the base game remains relatively sparse.
Brace for a downward spiral
Unfortunately, things do not look particularly stable beyond the solid creation tools. While the management is relatively simple and easy to grasp, some factors make this game a grueling chore. For one, rides can be popular one moment, then lose visitors the next. Toilets also seem to be affected since they always ran red in profits.
Players can check the comments offered under each facility to pinpoint the root cause. But over 2,000 visitors saying, “We can’t find toilet #4!”and leaving a thumbs down is odd when crowds clearly are visiting it. This highlights another issue with Park Beyond – its AI. Other management sims like Jurassic Park Evolution allow players to control their staff directly to sort out any possible issues.
Unfortunately, that is not the case here. For example, players will have to wait for their janitors to wrap up tasks in one corner of the park to move on to another. This can be frustrating when critical issues must be dealt with immediately. As such, the best option players have is to hire as many people as possible to get things done.
But that also affects income as they need to be paid wages. Coupled with the fact that monstrous Impossification costs can send profits further tanking, players have no choice but to make small parks that rake in safe and steady income. Sadly that is antithetical to Park Beyond’s whole mantra.
True freedom lies in the sandbox mode
The sandbox mode is perhaps the true saving grace for Park Beyond. Players have a large variety of different biomes to pick from. These range from lush forests and isolated islands to harsh deserts and serene coastlines, all featuring unique terrain and environments. This can help players come up with creative themes and park designs. But there’s more. Players can tweak various other design parameters too.
These range from the budget (up to Unlimited) and upgrade unlocks to facility degradation and Goals. Experiment with Terraforming, check out various rides, and practice coaster creation – there is so much to do. In short, players can turn off the problematic aspects of Park Beyond and create their own dream space of wild rides. They can create what they want without worries, as the only limit is their imagination.
Graphics, performance, and sound
Park Beyond is built upon Unreal Engine 4. Visually, it’s a striking game thanks to its colorful aesthetic. Its characters are also vividly designed and look like something out of cartoon shows – which is clearly a design choice in line with the whimsical theme of the game. On the performance side, things are mostly smooth. But players can expect a slowdown when the park becomes bigger, especially with massive crowds.
As for sound, it features light-hearted tones that pair well with the game’s direction. But we do run into issues when it comes to bugs. I had an issue where the cursor would not align with the UI, making menu navigation difficult. The game has been out for over a week, and some issues remain despite receiving patches. For example, the paths can clip through the ground at times.
I even had the tutorial menus pop up despite completing associated objectives a while back. Hopefully, Limbic Entertainment will sort these issues out soon because these do not help the design problems of the game either.
Conclusion
At first glance, Park Beyond’s management and ride creation is a surprisingly fun romp. The colorful visuals, intuitive controls, and robust ride creation are bound to attract newcomers and genre fans alike. The Impossify mechanic adds something new into the mix, but it also signals the game’s weaknesses. These range from the broken economy to seemingly random AI behavior.
In short, players will eventually find their fun sapped by a myriad of issues that are more than just technical. While Sandbox mode is a solid alternative, the lack of variety in options is also felt compared to its competitors. Overall, players should check Park Beyond out after the problems have been sorted out since there is clearly room for growth here.
Park Beyond
Reviewed on: PC
Platform(s): PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S
Developer(s): Limbic Entertainment
Publishers(s): Bandai Namco
Release date: June 16, 2023
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