Hands on with Park Beyond - Preview
Way back in 1994, I managed to buy a game for PC called Theme Park, it billed itself as a Construction and management simulation game, which didn’t mean anything to me. It did however have lots of rides and bright colours and that was enough for my child brain and here we are some 30 years later and I still find myself drawn to these sorts of games. Bandai Namco were kind enough to provide me with an early build of Park Beyond, which is just about to enter its closed beta phase and I came away impressed.
There are really two ways to play any theme park building game, the first is for the detail, planning out your park down to the trash can locations and the second is so you can ‘ride’ the rides you build. I often find myself going more to the second option, but there was a nice campaign with characters, that had me focusing on the first. But unlike other games you are not a master theme park designer, though based on the opening your character has big aspirations to be. After a nice cutscene, I was introduced to Blaze, part-time thrill seeker and mechanic and with her we get to learn the basics of coaster construction. Having built a decent track, Phil Bailey appears and he is the showman who wants to have people visit his parks, the only problem they are pretty bad.
For a campaign the missions that I got to play were fairly by the numbers, the first mission was the single rollercoaster and acted as the games tutorial/prologue. The second one gave the basics for theme park management, it is here where staff are employed, feedback is assessed and all that sort of stuff. The final mission I was given access to, is where the games unique mechanic comes into play, Impossification. If the terms seems unfamiliar to you, that is because it is something that the team at Limbic Entertainment have made up and is defined as taking a ride that you know and making it more. This can mean taking a simple Ferris Wheel and adding in many more wheels or having a cannon shoot your rollercoaster car across the park. Rollercoaster construction is quite fluid, the end of your current track piece is tied to the mouse curser, so rotating the camera makes it move, but otherwise its solid. You can adjust the tracks pitch and yaw, through in lift hills or brake zones and even a few barrel rolls.
Now Impossifying your attractions is fairly simple, if the ride can support it and you have unlocked the option, you just need to shake your mouse when placing the base version of the ride. It might have been the build I had access to, but the rides were not that impressive for me, not saying they were bad, but when you can build your own rollercoaster, a twin level Ferris Wheel isn’t that big of a thrill. Of course, that is in the riding sense, in terms of the visual impact they are amazing and more so when you bring the camera down to the ground and look up. Something I haven’t touched on are the management tools, there are a lot, from heat maps of where people are spending the most time, feedback on attractions including the price per ride and even the option to set the price on each individual food item. Just know that if you are someone who loves the management aspect, there will be a lot here to keep you engaged.
With all that I feel now is a good time to talk about the games visuals and again while a preview build, it looked pretty decent across the board. The humans that come to your park are pretty basic, but its great to see them form social groups, i.e. families, teens and so on. Having them form lines for the hot chocolate stand and then give up and walk away, is also fun to watch, even if the feedback may hurt the park. The rides are the show piece here, even the basic flat rides look amazing and they can be ridden on, should you desire, but even without that watching them in motion is great. The thrill of things comes from the rollercoaster and as you can make your own, riding it once you are done is a treat. Something that I noticed when building a big coaster is that the yaw didn’t like to go back to 0 for me and when I tried to flatten it out, the track just inverted. This meant that on a random section of track, the entire train car went upside and then through a big bend and I totally didn’t plan it.
The build I had access to also included a sandbox mode, letting me loose with all the designs I wanted to use and that had moments of fun, but I honestly enjoyed the campaign more. It wasn’t just a list of objectives to hit, but there were choices I could make, which gave me more of a sense that it was my park and not just a park. Park Beyond is not breaking the fundamentals of what a theme park game needs to be, but just like its impossification aspect, is changing how big and fun they can be. When the full game releases in June, I will be in line to buy a ticket for this one.
Park Beyond is set to hit PC, Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5 on June 16th. The games closed beta will take place on PC from May 9th to 16th and you can register for it here.
