Building theme parks in Parkitect

During this year’s Steam summer sale I picked up Parkitect, a theme park builder and spiritual successor to Rollercoaster Tycoon 2. And it turned into one of my most played games this year.

When I started the game I was making pretty basic stuff and playing similarly to how I would approach RCT2. It wasn’t until about 8 levels into the campaign it really clicked with me, and I tried not to use any pre-made rides going forward.

I found it really hard to get started on things like layout and theming, so I took inspiration from one of the scenario designers Silvarret, and images I found online while Googling the scenario names. From there it became much easier for me to do my own thing.

Here’s a little montage of my favourite parks from the campaign:

This is dorky, but the challenge of getting block breaks to line up so that there are no trains waiting is really satisfying when done right, and it maximises efficiency when guests enter and exit the ride.

The small team who worked on Parkitect has done an amazing job. I prefer this type of game over Planet Coaster — which is more like RCT3. The isometric view and grid-based scenery makes it much easier and faster to make something visually appealing, and the way decoration ties into gameplay is really cool too.