Australian Release: Out Now
The game begins with an in-depth tutorial, hosted by one of four advisors. These cartoon characters are here to help, explaining the basics to you at the start and then transitioning into a voice of gentle commentary throughout the rest of the game. Computer-controlled business partners can be overbearing in sim games. Here, they hit the right balance.
Your chosen associate will teach you how to lay down paths, install rides, hire staff and performers and more. With the basics under your belt, you're given free rein to design your park as you wish. It's satisfying, simple and fun to manage the placement and maintenance of rides and eateries for your visitors. But that's just scratching the surface.
There are added layers of depth to explore in Theme Park, and once you're comfortable with the building and maintenance aspects of amusement park design, you can dive deeper into the meat of micromanagement. You can adjust the rate of speed at which a ride operates. You can tweak each individual staff member's salary down to the dollar. You can even alter the level of fat content contained in your ice cream shop's servings of frozen yogurt. Theme Park lets you live in the minutiae.
And at its most advanced, you'll be able to play the stock market to capitalize on or compensate for the rising and lowering profit margins of your park. Theme Park looks simple on the surface, but there's hours worth of exploring to do in the most minor of menus.
Members who own this game: