Adventure Park Preview

Adventure Park is a game developed by B-Alive, a rather unheard of company, and is a homage to days past of Theme Park simulators like Theme Park and Rollercoaster Tycoon. The game keeps to the old school style of building a theme park from scratch up to a sprawling complex of attractions and amenities to cater to everyone’s needs. However, this genre is rather stale and dead nowadays, with very few games within the genre coming out, does Adventure Park give you the ride of a lifetime, or is it simple reaching too high in an era of high quality games.

Story

Adventure Park has no solid story to it; the campaign is basically a big tutorial to the game and its mechanics, teaching you how to play the game and how to make the best theme park you can. What little snippets of story you get are backstory to the park you are taking over, from a science park that has given you their space and money to develop the area or a desolate desert like restaurant that is in need of attractions to get customers to their restaurant.

The campaign can take anywhere from 10 hours to double that, depending on how long you take developing each park or fail in your attempt to gain enough money and happiness.

Gameplay

If you have ever played a theme park simulator game before you will know how it plays out, you 90’s kid you. You move around the map with WASD, the arrow keys or moving the mouse to a corner of the screen and do all of your interactions with the left click and deselecting with the right click. You can choose what building to place, its orientation and sometimes its size or type, with track creation for rollercoasters.

The gameplay is very simplistic in AP, with few choices in amenities, rides and decorations, or at least it feels as if each one isn’t too much different from the next. The majority of the gameplay is in its placement of buildings and altering the prices for each service, increasing the price of drinks or how much a ticket for a ride is or if you want to offer coke and water or just water at a shop. It feels as if the game wants us to think we have complete control and customisation but when it gets down to it, more is better.

The upgrade system is very roundabout in its delivery, as to upgrade your rides or offer more food and drinks in your shops you have to get a higher quality park in the medium of stars which can take a rather long while to gain. To get stars you have to keep your park in tip top shape with all the newest rides and amenities as well as keep the prices and services at the correct settings to make all the visitors happy. There isn’t much satisfaction to be had in reaching a new rating however, as when you reach the next level you simple flip a switch on each ride to make it “better” and there is no feeling of accomplishment.

Overall Thoughts and Feelings

If you are a fan of music in games you will be sourly disappointed in the variety in AP’s soundtrack as whenever you choose a map or mission you will have to sit through the same music track on loop for the entirety of your gaming session. The music is very well done and ticks all the boxes when it comes to atmosphere and fitting to the theme of the park, no pun intended, but after the 20^th time hearing the song you simply just want to turn the music off and turn on your own.

Adventure Park feels very boring at times, especially in the Campaign mode where you have to reach certain targets set by the game which can become very absurd. The majority of the targets are to keep your visitors happy and content with the park, but then there are the insane challenges like earning 50,000 gold which is such a chore to do, especially if you’re around -25,000. If you set up your park correctly it really is just a matter of letting the game play itself with no input needed from you, albeit a longer time is needed to reach the more annoying goals.

Adventure Park does offer a free-play option in the menu to let you play around in a no bounds game type, with the ability to set money, rating and handicaps to the map. Though this mode feels very empty and tacked on after the campaign, without missions to give you any drive and the only goal to make the best park you can.

It’s is fun for quite some time and can bring back a lot of nostalgia for a 90’s kid, the wait times are annoying and the fast forward feature doesn’t help too much to alleviate this feeling, on top of the minimal space you have in each park to play with. We hope the the full version fixes a lot of the issue I found playing the preview, and I hope to review the final build when it becomes available.

System Requirements