Is this game a spiritual successor to Sim Theme Park?

[Feels Ranger Man]

I loved that game, this game seems a lot like it but is there any caveats I should know about? Is the game good? Does it have good support? Buggy? Any major issues? Thanks.

[Filter62]

I think it's successor or RCT series mostly, though I never played any)

[Solodric]

Originally posted by Feels Ranger Man:

I loved that game, this game seems a lot like it but is there any caveats I should know about? Is the game good? Does it have good support? Buggy? Any major issues? Thanks.

I loved that game as well. To answer your question, no, it's not directly tied to Sim Theme Park. The history's a bit more convoluted; the genre started with Bullfrog's game, Theme Park, and Rollercoaster Tycoon was a sort of merger of that tradition and the Transport/Railroad Tycoon genres (Chris Sawyer being the designer of Transport and Rollercoaster Tycoon, and Transport Tycoon itself being a derivative of Railroad Tycoon).

So think of it as two origin-points, Railroad Tycoon and Theme Park, which merged to form Rollercoaster Tycoon. Parkitect is a direct sequel/iteration on the Rollercoaster Tycoon formula, right down to a chibi art style and bird's-eye isometric view (there's a free-camera mod on the workshop if you want one) so that you can actually tell what's going on (modern theme park games with their non-chibi art styles tend to be very hard to discern at a distance)

Sim Theme Park is in a divergent lineage, being more directly based off of the original Theme Park. It's more like a direct sequel. It definitely took some inspiration from Rollercoaster Tycoon with its detailed coaster-builder (rather than plopping down premade coasters), but if you're expecting the persnickety in-depth pylon building rollercoaster designer from back then, Parkitect does not have that. The coaster-builder is no less deep, but you won't have the game yell at you about a lack of support-structure space (which can be good or bad; if you want you can make a coaster that literally has no support-struts in Parkitect, which is very silly, but there's freedom to play around at least). If you loved Sim Theme Park, you will love Parkitect, but it will take a bit to adjust to the differing lineage/language this game speaks.

To answer your other questions: Yes, Parkitect is a great game. In my opinion, the best of the current coaster sims. The reason for this is that it merges creativity with actual problem-solving: you can get really creative laying out parks and rides (like designing a coaster), but you have to deal with real money-making/cashflow issues - it's not just a creative sandbox, and if you fail to make a financially solvent park, you'll crash and burn. That means that your creativity is working against an actual problem, which I always think is superior to just having what amounts to a freeform coaster-builder (this is, after all, a game)

It does have very good support. The devs are almost always in threads answering questions, the game's received boatloads of updates, and the community supports it with all sorts of mods, fan-made scenarios, fan-made parks, fan-made rides, you name it. Loads of extra content when you've chewed through what the base game has to offer, which is substantial in itself. And it recently got multiplayer! Talk about a huge update.

As for bugginess and major issues, it does have a few bugs (multiplayer in particular still has some minor annoyances, nothing you can't work through easily). In particular, there are aspects of the parks that require more micromanagement than they probably should, but only if you're a perfectionist (for instance, you can't tell your janitors to always clean shops when they're a certain % dirty; they clean it at 75% automatically, so some people will always get sick in your park from dirty food. But very few.) It's little stuff like that which you might not even notice depending on how much you're trying to optimize your park.

Give it a whirl, maybe even play it with some friends. It's been great fun for us.

[Solodric]

There are three other big kids on the block right now in this genre, by the way. The first is Planet Coaster, which is much lighter on the management side of things but much bigger on scenery and ride design, allowing you to make photorealistic parks with fireworks displays and the like - it's a big creative outlet, apparently, but without much in the way of game challenge (I haven't had a chance to play it yet, but I intend to).

Then there's the infamous Rollercoaster Tycoon World. This game got panned so badly it's insane, but in reality it's... okay. It does have some bugs (or it did last time I played it), and there are parts of it that do look ugly or buggy, but in general it played alright - about what you'd expect. I found RCTW offered a very similar experience to Sim Theme Park overall in that it was a 3D perspective-camera game with large, wide-open parks and a coaster-builder that demanded room for supports. Comparing it to Parkitect, Parkitect has a much more challenging set of scenarios, and has a behind-the-scenes system where you're encouraged to cover up stuff like delivery routes and staff areas with decor. It's simultaneously easier to get into Parkitect and much deeper to master, but RCTW offers a few neat tricks you won't see in an isometric park-builder, so it might be worth giving a spin if it's on a very steep discount (do not buy it at anything more than $10, certainly - and right now you can get Planet Coaster for less than that, and it was designed by a wonderful group of indie devs that deserve your support much more than Atari does. For that matter, Parkitect was designed by a tiny team working solely off of fan support and love for what was, at the time, a dead genre!)

The last one to be aware of is Open Rollercoaster Tycoon. OpenRCT takes the files from RCT1/2 (so you do need to own at least RCT2) and imports them into a new, open-source framework that massively updates everything. It adds multiplayer and a whole slew of upgrades, so it's the best way to experience the originals (and there's a lot there worth experiencing). Many people still hold this up as the best coaster/park sim experience on-offer to date, but Parkitect has beaten it out pretty far in my opinion, due to its more in-depth systems (like behind-the-scenes and management systems), its superior feature-set (such as ride G-force visualizers), and superior scenario design (the scenarios in Parkitect are much more creative and often challenging. One scenario, for instance, sees you trying to make a park in the middle of an industrial zone - if guests catch a glimpse of the old, decaying machinery that surrounds your park, their immersion will break in an instant!)

So yeah, four major games to choose from, and that's not even counting Rollercoaster Tycoon Classic, a port of RCT1/2 with updates on mobile devices helmed by Chris Sawyer himself. Bear in mind that there's basically two lineages here; Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 pivoted to 3D and focused on intricate ride design and freedom, and spinoffs of that design are seen in Rollercoaster Tycoon World and Planet Coaster, whereas the old-school management-focused isometric design is what Parkitect and OpenRCT focus on.

[Feels Ranger Man]

Thanks for the lengthy but informative post. Very helpful. Think I'll grab this on GOG as it's on sale iirc.

[Solodric]

No prob. Sorry it was so long, your question was more complex than it might seem XD

[CMDR Sweeper]

The multiplayer in this is the greatest part, but it is closer to Rollercoaster Tycoon, the controls, the path handling follows rules closer to Rollercoaster Tycoon so if you have played those, then this will be similar.
And did I mention the multiplayer? Getting to have Coop similar to Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe is great with friends.

[Enterprofilenamehere]

Originally posted by Feels Ranger Man:

Thanks for the lengthy but informative post. Very helpful. Think I'll grab this on GOG as it's on sale iirc.

I recommend getting it on steam so that you have easy access to steam workshop. I've noticed that a lot of people regret getting it elsewhere because of this.

[⎛⎝⎛-||-⎞ ⎠⎞]

Don't buy Rollercoaster Tycoon World even if it's $5. If just farkin awful.

[Solodric]

Originally posted by spyrescaa:

Don't buy Rollercoaster Tycoon World even if it's $5. If just farkin awful.

It is buggy to an absurd degree and has a lot of bad design even outside of that, yes. There are some high points, but no one should dive into that game without both eyes open about its flaws.