Build and ride your own roller coasters in this relaxing theme park sim - Park Beyond Quick Review

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PLAY IT OR SKIP IT?

Play it if you’re a fan of building and management games. Park Beyond isn’t as deep as theme park builders like Planet Coaster, but it’s a fun, easy-to-play game with a great selection of maps and building tools. While I was able to build some pretty complex roller coasters from scratch, Park Beyond also has plenty of prefabricated rides and coasters, making it perfect for short or more casual play sessions. I did run into some issues during my playtime, but most of those problems were pretty minor, and I’m hoping they’ll be addressed through patches in the not-too-distant future.

TIME PLAYED

I played about nine hours of Park Beyond, which gave me plenty of time to check out the campaign and sandbox mode. When I started the game, I was pushed into a weird tutorial that had me build a massive roller coaster over a bunch of apartments. Thankfully, the tutorial was pretty short, and once I finished that up, I was free to focus on the parts of the game I was interested in. It’s possible to play in sandbox mode with everything unlocked right from the start, and I appreciated that I didn’t have to get through a long list of objectives to get full access to the game’s building tools.

WHAT’S AWESOME

• Lots of ways to play. Like most theme park builders, Park Beyond has an objective-oriented campaign and a sandbox mode that lets you build to your heart’s content. While the campaign is pretty standard, the sandbox mode can be customized to better suit your preferred playing experience. I could give myself tons of funds and build away, but I could also adjust the settings so that I gradually unlocked more rides and land via gameplay. I could focus on a goal of my choosing, like building tons of roller coasters, but I could also turn off goals entirely. I already have a preference for playing in sandbox mode in games like this, and I loved that I could adjust the settings so that the overall experience was more to my liking.

• Tons of customization options. Not only did I unlock tons of rides and shops over the course of my playthrough, but I built up a collection of props that really brought my park to life. There are animatronic dinosaurs, bubbling fountains, and plenty of other amazing decorations. I could customize the colors of nearly every object I placed in my park, from rides to shops to flower patches, which made it easier to build a cohesive park. If you’re willing to get really creative, there are even building modules you can use to customize the appearance of rides or create structures from scratch.

WHAT SUCKS

• No custom controls. Park Beyond didn’t let me make any changes to the default controls, which was mildly frustrating. I was playing on a gaming laptop, and I would have preferred to use my touchpad and keyboard exclusively. Unfortunately, I was stuck using my mouse for tasks like rotating the camera and rides. It wasn’t a huge deal, and I got used to it after a while, but I always prefer when a game lets me adjust the default controls so that they better suit my needs.

• There are some issues with saving. Park Beyond has an autosave feature, but it only holds onto three autosaves at a time. The game creates new autosaves pretty regularly, especially when you play in campaign mode, making it easy to accidentally overwrite saves and lose them for good. This shouldn’t be a problem for players that exclusively stick with the campaign or focus on a single park in sandbox mode, but if you switch between modes, you’ll have to rely on manual saves to keep your data. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t prompt you to save before you exit, so forgetful players could wind up wiping out their park. I unintentionally lost a park I’d spent hours on, which was a huge bummer.

• Park management could use some tweaking. I had a great time playing with the building tools in Park Beyond, but I wasn’t that impressed with the management side of the game. There are three demographics your park can cater to—teens, adults, and families—and every ride and attraction is rated based on its appeal to that audience. I was excited by this system at first, but I quickly discovered that it didn’t have much depth. Building a family-oriented ride brought families to my park, but it didn’t really do anything beyond that. If a ride wasn’t getting traction, I could check for customer complaints and make adjustments, but unhappy guests always had the same two issues: Either the ticket price was too high or the line was too long. I would have loved some more in-depth management tools, like targeted advertising campaigns, updating signing, or the ability to place an entertainer near a flagging attraction.

💬 Will you be creating the theme park of your dreams in Park Beyond, or do you suffer from motion sickness? Let us know what you think in the comments!