One of my core gaming memories growing up was having a blast playing the old Theme Park game. Fast forward 30 years and, in my eyes, there hasn’t really been a true successor. Every similar game I’ve played since has either been blighted by overly complicated controls for console, felt like there’s no ‘soul’, and/or had a lot of the fun I associated with Theme Park removed.
If I’m being honest, I didn’t know that Parkitect existed before I came across it in the ‘games to be reviewed’ section at Xbox Tavern. I took a look at the trailer and it piqued my interest, a week onwards from there and I’m ready to put my thoughts onto digital paper.
With Parkitect Deluxe Edition you have two modes to choose from Campaign and Sandbox, as it’s the deluxe edition the two previous released DLCs, Taste of Adventures and Booms & Blooms are included. The campaign itself has a meaty 46 scenarios for you to work through, 10 of which are from the Taste of Adventure, all which increase in difficulty as you progress.
When working through the campaign and experimenting in Sandbox mode, there are 87 different rides for you to build, not all are available from the get-go during the campaign as you must research them, or some will become available after reaching certain checkpoints. At the start of the campaign there’s a nice hand holding tutorial which I fully recommend you sit through before attempting your hand in Sandbox.
The controls are generally okay, but there are times where you can’t exit the tab you entered so you have to back all the way out. Building the simple rides is also easy enough, although I would’ve preferred it if I could build the queue paths there and then rather then having to go into the path building menu.
When it comes to the more complicated rides like roller coaster, it can once again feel challenging with having to scroll through the bend or loop you want. I feel an option to have a mouse pointer would’ve made navigation much easier on consoles when it comes to menu navigation, and ride building. With its existence it would’ve eliminated the need to back out countless times when in certain sections.
But I will say once you’ve built a more complex ride like a roller coaster, it does give you a great deal of satisfaction seeing the park attendees queue up and then experience whatever concoction you’ve come up with.
The audio is a plus for me as well, the menu music is nice and calm, it has a repetitive loop but whilst sitting here writing this, I never got bored or irritated by it. Rides have their own music which you can change. Visuals are also well done; they’re obviously not top of the line, but I don’t think they need to be any better than they are.
Digging into the Sandbox mode now, the tutorial map is here as well and is one of the 10 terrains you can take over and let your creative juices flow, Each of the Sandbox terrains has its own goals and budgets. You can disable the need for cash, research and goals. This is 100% what I did, and it gave me happy flashbacks to the 90’s where I built the biggest and longest roller coaster possible.
Despite all the content available the game is only 1GB on Xbox, which means it won’t become an inconvenience due to its size if you’re treating it as a pick up and play game. Parkitect isn’t a game I’ll be playing over and over, but with a small file size it won’t be a game I delete off my hard drive to make room for another and will likely play when I get 30-minute window to satisfy that gaming itch!
Conclusion
Parkitect is a great little game that didn’t quite let me relive the glory days of the 90’s Theme Park game but it came closer than most. There’s tons of content to get stuck into for any wannabe theme park architect.
This game was reviewed based on Xbox S|X review code, using an Xbox S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.
