Funpark Friends has much of what you’d expect from a social management-type game. There’s a good amount of rides, businesses, and decorations you can purchase for your amusement park; you’ll be collecting rent and experience from each building at a regular interval; and there’s some limited social interaction. It’s par for the course, for the most part. What the game is really missing though, is a compelling reason to play it. While competent, there’s nothing about the game that sticks out, making it all too forgettable.
Funpark Friends has much of what you’d expect from a social management-type game. There’s a good amount of rides, businesses, and decorations you can purchase for your amusement park; you’ll be collecting rent and experience from each building at a regular interval; and there’s some limited social interaction. It’s par for the course, for the most part. What the game is really missing though, is a compelling reason to play it. While competent, there’s nothing about the game that sticks out, making it all too forgettable.
As per usual, you begin the game with a nearly empty plot of land, and the goal is to build up an ever growing amusement park. There’s no story to speak of in Funpark Friends, you simply go about your business. You can do your own thing or follow the quests, which provide a good way to introduce yourself to the basics. Even if you don’t though, things aren’t too hard to figure out.
As with most theme parks, you can outift your own with rides, games, and food stalls, as well as spruce things up with some decorations. There’s a sparse few options to choose from initially, but once you gain a few experience levels there’s a good selection of things to buy. Aside from the decorations, everything takes a certain amount of time both to build and to produce profit for you to collect. The bigger, more expensive buildings take longer but provide a better payout. You can also speed things up with the game’s premium currency, called stardust, which is actually relatively plentiful. You can use it semi-regularly without having to worry about spending real-world money.
The main problem with Funpark Friends is it’s just so bland. The gameplay is entirely unoriginal, and it’s not helped by the uninspired presentation. The visuals are pleasant but forgettable, with tiny buildings that animate sparingly. To make matters worse, while a large part of the enjoyment comes from designing and customizing your park, you can’t even rotate buildings, typically a mainstay feature in this type of game. You might also want to play with the sound off (or your own tunes in the background) as the music, while fitting with the theme quite well, is incredibly repetitive.
There’s some fun to be had with the game if you’re into social management games, but not a whole lot. Aside from the small frustrations — like the inability to rotate objects and the sparse social features — Funpark Friends‘ main crime is a lack of imagination. It’s a game you’ve likely played many times before, only with a different theme. You may stick around for a little while, at least long enough to get that roller coaster, but this isn’t the kind of game that sticks with you for a long time.
