


I would gladly raise staff salaries and build new attractions and shops without giving proper consideration to the gate price, but only before blowing more dollars on research just so I could see those late game pirate ships and haunted houses in action. Blissfully unaware of the concept of outgoings, would I employ brand new handymen to sweep up every last scrap of litter and brand new mechanics to fix every broken helter-skelter (of which there will be many). This is the way I would play when I was a child. Again, this is the beauty of Theme Park a game that can quite easily be about building the world’s tallest coaster or biggest big dipper before anything as routine as turning a profit. The idea is to build and ultimately sell a financially successful park in each country on the world map, it’s simply that most players (casual or otherwise) will probably not even notice or care.
#SIM THEME PARK VIDEO GAME PC#
Indeed, even though its roots as a PC sandbox game are abundantly clear, Theme Park can be won. Even without any knowledge of the game’s inner workings, anyone can have fun building a park for those little visitors to enjoy and trash in equal measure! As a kid I can recall many enjoyable sessions, even as I remained oblivious to the mechanics that would actually afford me success by gaming’s traditional standards. This freely scalable difficulty is what set Theme Park apart from a lot of similar titles at the time of its release.
#SIM THEME PARK VIDEO GAME FULL#
Only by advancing to the Sim setting do players gain access to the research tracks and contract negotiations and even then you’ll find the warehouse and stock market features walled off unless you choose to go in with the Full setting enabled. Filling a park with rides and watching those impressive (for their time) animated coaster videos is all younger players need to start having a good time here and the Sandbox mode will allow for it by automating all of the backstage tinkering that each park normally requires. This is because Theme Park is especially clever about how it draws you in. Bullfrog’s classic management sim Theme Park is arguably the deepest and most covertly complex of any video game we might choose to label as a “gateway” offering, and yet it’s still very much one in the same spirit of Super Mario and Angry Birds. Nowadays you don’t need to look far to find players with the enthusiasm and skill to give you a solid online session of the latest FIFA or Call of Duty, but before all of that were video games whose success can be clearly linked to a friendly premise and an easily digestible gameplay loop. It’s a useful term, basically, and I find it curious that video games never adopted it before the Internet became a thing.

Board games such as Ticket to Ride and Pandemic (both notable for their attractive themes and ease of play) are popular examples that enthusiasts have used to break down the perceived barriers of complexity that board games are often associated with. The term “gateway game” was therefore created to highlight any tabletop game whose play time is breezy and colourful enough that it might attract novices to the hobby in question. Most board games thrive when more players are present, but those thick rulebooks and wealth of pieces can often intimidate people whose gaming experience begins and ends with Monopoly.
