Park Beyond

Management sims, by their very nature, are a very niche genre, but those who get into these games can never quite manage to find their way out. And one management sim in particular that genre fans have loved for years is, of course, Rollercoaster Tycoon.

Soon, Limbic Entertainment and Bandai Namco will be delivering their own wacky take on that genre with Park Beyond, a game that may not have dominated the headlines over recent months, but has certainly caught the eye with what it’s promising to bring to the table. Ahead of its launch just a few days from now, here, we’re going to go over a few key details that you should know about the game.

PREMISE

Let’s start with the basics- what exactly is Park Beyond? In a nutshell, it’s a management sim where you’ll build and manage your own theme park. If you’re familiar with this genre, you already know the drill- you’ll start off with a patch of land, and using your limited resources, you’ll build something basic yet serviceable, and then bit by bit, as you start getting more traffic (and more money) in, you’ll improve various aspects of your park to keep on making it progressively better, more elaborate, and more complex. That is a solid premise in and of itself, of course, but Park Beyond is doing a few things to set itself apart from some of its peers.

IMPOSSIFICATION

The key mechanic that’s looking like Park Beyond’s biggest and most interesting selling point is what the developers have dubbed “impossification”. Plain and simple, the impossification system will allow you to build rides that don’t have to abide by the laws of physics and gravity. As such, safety and precaution will go out the window, and you’ll instead be encouraged to build the craziest and most ridiculous rides that you can, from gravity-defying Ferris wheels to rollercoaster tracks that weave their way through tunnels and mountains, and anything else your imagination can conure up.

AMAZEMENT

Park Beyond will allow players to get creative with impossified versions of rides, but it will, as you might image, adopt a structured approach, in that you’ll have to research and unlock new ways to impossify your rides. To do that, in turn, you’ll need to accumulate “amazement”, which will essentially be generated by park visitors as they experience the rides in your par, with impossified rides generating greater amounts.

CUSTOMIZING RIDES AND FACILITIES

Developer Limbic Entertainment is promising an extensive amount of control over customizing all aspects of your park, from rides to facilities. Players will be able to freely build across massive parks and have control granular aspects like the shapes, sizes, and colours of the paths you’re building, the prices of your rides, the inventories and prices of different kinds of shops and facilities, having different varying for buildings, adding unique colours, lights, and music to rides, freely placing a wide variety of decorative elements, and much more.

MAPS

While the most important thing in a game like Park Beyond is obviously going to be the rides you build and how you choose to customize the park, players will also have options for a variety of different maps to set their theme parks in. While an exact number of maps hasn’t been confirmed yet, we do know there will be several biomes, including deserts, Mediterranean landscapes, alpine mountains, and more, with each also having different variations, from a desert with an oasis to one that’s essentially a scorched wasteland.

TERRAFORMING

As you’d expect from a game like Park Beyond, players will also have access to a full terraforming toolset to shape the land on the map however you see fit in order to make the kind of park you’ll want to make. You’ll be able to make mountains and tunnels through which you can build tracks for your rollercoasters, you can make lakes and water bodies, and much more.

ADVISORS AND STAFF

A crucial park of building and managing your park will, of course, be building up a staff that can help you do that. That will require everything from hiring staff to keep your park clean to safety officers and more. Players will also frequently receive ideas from advisors, and whether or not that falls within the parameters of the kind of park you want to make will be your decision. Advisors will often also float conflicting ideas, like an especially complex ride that may or may not be financially viable, where once again, you’ll have to make the final decision.

BOARD MEMBERS

Another aspect of the management side of Park Beyond will be making sure the board members of your theme park are happy with what you’re doing. That will entail regular meetings with the board, where you’ll be pitching ideas for your park, and where, presumably, how well the park is doing under your management will influence the board’s decisions. Exactly how big of an impact these will have on the overarching progression remains to be seen.

VISITORS

Of course, just as important as the staff, if not even more important, will be the people visiting your park- after all, it’s their money that you ultimately want. Park Beyond looks like it’ll have a fairly heavy emphasis on studying social trends and looking at visitors and their dynamically changing demands to see what rides may or may not be popular. Ensuring that the ride you’re building aligns with what would drive a larger crowd is going to be key to helping your park grow bigger and more successful.

MODES

What exactly can you expect from Park Beyonds in terms of what modes it’ll offer? It’s going to be pretty standard on that front, if you have experience with the genre. For starters, there will be a campaign, where you’ll start off with restricted budgets and limited options and will slowly make your way through different sets of objectives to unlock greater options, progressively make more money, and continuously keep building bigger and more elaborate rides and parks. Then there will be the Sandbox mode, where, as the name suggests, you can pretty much play however you want, including turning on infinite money, the need to research and unlock new rides, and more.

PC REQUIREMENTS

Park Beyond will be available on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S at launch, given the kind of game this is, it goes without saying that a large chunk of the audience will be on PC. And exactly what specs will your PC need to hit to run the game? On minimum settings, you’ll need either an i7-3770 or a Ryzen 5 1400, along with either a GeForce GTX 660 or a Radeon HD 7870 for 1080p, or a GeForce GTX 1060 or a Radeon R9 Fury for 4K. Meanwhile, on recommended settings, you’ll need either i7-7700K or a Ryzen 5 3600, along with either GeForce GTX 970 or a Radeon R9 290X for 1080p, or a GeForce RTX 2060 Super or a Radeon RX 6700 XT for 4K. On either setting, you’ll also need 12 GB of RAM and about 30 GB of free storage.