Intro

Today, I tried Parkitect, a modern take on a classic theme park tycoon, and let me tell you, this game was far from what I expected.

Once you get past the initial hit of nostalgia, you can clearly see that Parkitect isn’t trying to win the graphics war against other games in the genre like Planet Coaster. Instead, the inspiration is drawn from the RollerCoaster Tycoon series. But rather than just copying the game and adding some modern polish to it, Parkitect is entirely unique, with new, distinct features and management options, game mechanics that surprised even me, and so much more that we’ll talk about. I came into this expecting something fairly simple, but I was completely shocked by such a detailed sim.

Management

Unlike most other games like this, where shops can pretty much just be left to run themselves, and staff are more like background decoration, Parkitect introduces the idea of actual logistical management. Wooh… big words. Basically, shops need stock and that stock needs to be delivered. To do this, you need to properly set up the backstage areas of your park, making sure your guests can’t see anything that could take them out of the magic of your park. If they can see crates, staff paths, or even the staff wandering around with boxes, they are snapped right out of the immersion. So all of a sudden, you’re not just designing a park, you’re designing the actual infrastructure behind it  too. You need to think about hidden pathways, underground networks of tunnels, and supply depots connected to delivery tubes. It adds this extra layer of planning that genuinely changes how you approach layouts. In games like Planet Coaster, you can really just throw everything together and it ends up feeling quite soulless. In Parkitect, everything has meaning. If you ignore anything, your guests will complain and your revenue will drop. It really matters. Of course, though, if you’re just here to build an aesthetic park, this can feel really restrictive. But, if optimisation and efficiency are your thing, this is where Parkitect really shines.

The staff management also really leans into this philosophy. Spamming caretakers doesn’t work in Parkitect. To really get an efficient team, you need to assign work zones. You need to think about workload, wages, and while miraculously, it never becomes overwhelming, it does demand your attention. In all honesty, I did *not* expect this level of thoughtfulness.

Research

One thing I did not expect to care this deeply about is research. Instead of just unlocking everything at the start, you gradually research new ride types, new shops, decorations. And because of how much money matters in this game, choosing what to prioritise, and how much to invest into your research teams feels really meaningful. Did I mention that you don’t get to pick the specifics that you research? You just get a thrill ride, or a coaster. This means that you could spend hundreds of dollars trying to get a new drinks stand, really making you evaluate if it’s worth it.

Building

When it comes to building tools, it gets a bit less interesting. Parkitect sits kind of middle ground honestly. It’s not as completely freeform as Planet Coaster. You don’t get the same sort of chaos that is possible in Planet Coaster. But, it’s also far more flexible than the old RollerCoaster Tycoon games ever were. The building system is really clean, and surprisingly powerful. You can create custom buildings piece by piece, and you do have enough creative freedom to really theme your park and rides properly. And because you can easily switch to a grid based tool, everything lines up really nicely. There’s something just so satisfying about the way each piece is so structured.

The coaster building is pretty solid too. It’s nothing revolutionary and you can’t go back and make slight adjustments after the fact if you so need - instead, you need to delete it and rebuild - but it’s intuitive and you do have enough control to make some genuinely interesting layouts. Because the game still cares about intensity, excitement, nausea, and g-forces, you’re not just building for looks. You’re really building for performance and that gives you a lot more of a goal than in other games. That’s the focus on management creeping back again. Guests react logically to your coasters, and they each have preferences. You have to build your coasters and parks to be reasonably priced, with a variety of different attractions to appeal to all of your guests. If you want to learn more about your guests, you can also pay for a marketing research to be completed within your park and get a much better overview of your demographics.

But, and this is an enormous but. There is no undo tool. You accidentally place or delete something, you have to delete or replace it yourself. It’s a huge effort. I was reading about how difficult it is to add an undo or redo tool to games like this, but it’s infuriating to constantly fix my little mistakes.

Finance

The financial control in all the little shops is deeper than it first appears. You don’t just set your entry fees and forget about them. You can adjust individual shop prices, analysing your profit margins and responding to guests' thoughts related to the values of your products. If people think that something is ridiculously overpriced, they’ll let you know. They’re just that generous. This directly impacts spending in your park and can have a huge impact on your profitability. Even deeper, you can adjust the levels of ingredients in your products to really fine tune your profit margins. If you’ve ever seen my content on Let’s Build A Zoo, this is likely where they drew their inspiration from. If you think you’re spending too much money on cheese for your most popular burger stand, halve the cheese. Give the guests half a slice. Be that guy.

And then there’s marketing. You can run targeted campaigns for specific rides, give out free tickets for those specific rides, promote the park as a whole, and much more. You can customise the duration and budget and it’s just so deep and thought out, I love it. Sort of relating to marketing, there can be random little events like a radio station mentioning your coaster and then visitor numbers spiking after. That feels dynamic. It makes the park feel like it exists in a wider world, rather than just this enclosed simulation. While it *is* subtle, it adds texture, and I love it.

Polish

But in terms of the sort of visual presentation of the game, this is where people would wrongfully underestimate it. Yes, it’s true. It has a slightly simple, almost toy-like art style. But, it’s clean, it’s consistent, the UI is readable, everything is accessible without being too overwhelming. Performance wise, it runs smoothly even once your park starts to get super busy. This art style is really popular among sims for zoos and theme parks. They are on either end of this polar scale. Either aiming for this cartoonish style, or ultra-realism. When games like Parkitect take this route, it is really freeing for them to be able to diverge from reality a bit, to create a really immersive and diverse world. 

The soundtrack does its job. It’s nothing groundbreaking, but it suitably fits the atmosphere. I love, at night, moving around my park hearing the different coasters and rides with their own music, looking at all of the really lovely lights - I forgot to mention how beautiful this game is at night, but it is *really* nice.

So, structurally, Parkitect feels like it was designed for people who *genuinely* love management sims. It prioritises the systems over visual spectacle, and while it might not have the visual wow-factor of the new Planet Coaster game, arguably, it delivers a more cohesive management sim experience. Which, again, is not what I expected going in. From the outside, it just looks like a game made with the nostalgia goggles glued on, but once your in, everything is so deliberate, and so perfectly done. Well done, Parkitect.

Campaign - Readables Bonus

Personally, I don’t usually play campaign modes because I prefer to be let free in a sandbox or franchise mode, but in Parkitect, the campaign feels like something else. The scenarios aren’t just disguised tutorials. Many of them seem to push back, as you start off with different terrain and space constraints, as well as more challenging financial situations. The game expects you to plan carefully. Loans, pricing, marketing all matter and play a part. 

The campaign mode reinforces that even more. Compared to modern management games that are leaning more and more into sandbox modes, there is something actually quite refreshing about Parkitect. Here you actually get to solve problems.

If the game throws you a curveball, which it will tell you about through the handy little notification bars at the bottom right corner of the screen, you have to overcome it. If ride parts supply is dropped and your safety is reduced, you need to carefully think about what to do next. In a big park, do you need to hire more mechanics temporarily? Finish training others in the special training centres that you can build? Sometimes the damages of ignoring the messages are subtle, like destroyed benches or knocked over bins as a gang of vandals enters your park, but they do carry big effects. That level of feedback makes the campaign feel properly engaging. Also, Parkitect has multi-player. What other management sim can boast that?

Conclusion

If I had to rate it, I’d give Parkitect a really solid 8/10. Its unique art style and approach to management sims is something to appreciate, and something that a lot of games could really learn from. If you want to try Parkitect yourself, it is available for FREE right now on its first ever Free Weekend event over on Steam. You can give it a go until the 9th of March. If you enjoyed, you can subscribe, leave a comment about anything you learnt or anything I missed and I’ll see you in the next one. Bye!