Adventure Park Preview

The theme park where building is half the adventure!

Even though I’ve never quite worked my way up to riding on the big-boy rollercoasters in real life, that isn’t to say I don’t love building my own monstrous amusement park creations in games like RollerCoaster Tycoon. It’s been a while since we’ve had a new amusement park simulator that reached such a high caliber, but Adventure Park from German developer b-alive looks to take everything we love about managing our own virtual theme parks, and reshaping it to fit today’s modern age of gaming.

But what fun would an amusement park be without all of those exciting rides and attractions to bring in the happy customers? Well Adventure Park is all about packing in the fun, with an intuitive grid-free coaster building system, different types of coasters, and other kinds of staple attractions, like the free-fall tower and Ferris wheel. I just don’t think I’ll be building any of those giant pirate ships that swing upside anytime soon: I’d rather be focusing my attention on the design of my park instead of cleaning up my visitors’ puke!

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Adventure Park features a single-player campaign mode, where players are tasked with managing several lively amusement parks; this is in addition to a sandbox mode, that lets players build the theme park of their dreams on one of 8 distinct maps. All of this will be handled super efficiently for the player in the game, by means of an adept and comprehensive management system that is fine-tuned and structured to provide just the right amount of challenge for beginners and experienced theme park aficionados alike.

Now even though Adventure Park looks to be a fresh new take on the proven RollerCoaster Tycoon formula, its beautiful 3D graphics already seem to be much more involved than a simplified top-down design. The first released screenshots of the game also show off a few of the thematic attractions you’ll be able to find, including a thrilling dinosaur ride, a space-themed rollercoaster, and even an alluring pharaoh’s tomb. And of course, the rides aren’t the only things you’ll be able to manage in the game: decorative objects like statues, lamps, fences, rocks, and plants play just as big a role in making your park the best it can be.

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Adventure Park will be riding the corkscrew coaster onto PCs in the third quarter of 2013.

Joel Brodie