Some will design their parks to precisely replicate parks that hold importance to them. When we construct an amusement park in videogame form, we manifest dreams of what we perceive amusement parks as they used to be, currently are, and could be. In these moments the player is living through the little virtual park guests. Some of these games will even let you observe from their first person perspective, taking in the ways they look around and what they walk by. A family of four will shy away from the ultimate thrill rides, and maybe decide not to buy the overpriced shakes as they walk to the carousel. Then a lot of the satisfaction comes from just seeing how the little people in the park react. The player will spend time imagining the ways that their coasters, shops and utilities are all utilized and attempt to make it all fit together.
In all of these, there is a nostalgic invocation of amusement park aesthetics, but it’s in theme park builders that the player is able to “live” out their dreams inside the park.ĭespite “builder” being the primary verb in the genre title, a large part of these games occur with observing visitors. In platformers, there is almost always a level for a cartoony protagonist to speed around. Think of horror games and there is probably a level or even an entire game (see Illbleed on Dreamcast) set in a malformed fairground. The amusement park is a recurring motif throughout videogames. Most of all, players are able to more concretely imagine the parks of their dreams through the tools provided by the game. Theme park builders challenge players by asking what really is fun.
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The gameplay doesn’t challenge the player to dominance or survival, but finding what visitors think is fun, and how to stay afloat while maintaining creative control. Compared to other management sims, the genre allows players to take a more fun approach to construction. However, as I have continued to spend more time building and learning about these spaces, I kept running into a similar theme: the propagation of the “great creative executive” figure.ĭespite the genre’s ups and downs, theme park builders have maintained popularity in computer games since the explosion of Rollercoaster Tycoon in 1999. As a result, I also felt inspired to go back to some of my favorite theme park manager games.
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In the last year, this has taken the form of me watching all Kevin Perjurer’s Defunctland video essay series on YouTube, which narrates stories of the most famous failures in theme park history. Rather than actually going, I have spent a large amount of time watching videos on YouTube of riders’ perspectives. Yet, despite this fear I have retained a deep yearning all my life to continue experiencing them. I am told that when I was young I ran out of Ripley’s Believe It or Not and was almost hit by a car. It’s not the roller coasters, as much as the immersion of physically being in uncanny space. For most of my life I have been terrified of amusement parks.