Posted February 20, 2015
This thread was triggered by the current promo and the RCT games never failing to shoot up that bestselling list every time they're on sale. Despite them having been on sale so often and so long, they never fail to be immensely popular. I suppose that's due to the fact any gamer, of the casual to the hardcore persuasion, of any age can thoroughly enjoy these. Am I wrong in the impression that GOG was the first to offer the first two as a digital purchase? Anyway, all three are great in their own regard and good management games like them just don't go out of style or so it seems.
Bringing us back to the original topic, it does seem like we'll be having a genre revival on our hands soon what with Atari finally making a proper RCT4 - let's just all try to forget that mobile crap happened - Frontier starting to work on their own theme park IP, and an as of yet fairly unkown indie dev working on Parkitect.
Let's just review a little of the info that is available on all three:
<span class="bold">Parkitect</span> - Texel Raptor
Now this to me is the most exciting one as of this moment, mostly due to the fact we know more about it than the other two, most thankfully due to their weekly devlogs that goes fairly in-depth into what they're working on and what may have been tweaked.. Supposed release date is September of this year, but as always this may still end up shifting by a month or two.
Look familiar? Yeah, it does very much appear like the first two RCT games but now in an actual 3D environment. That said, there will be a good number of deviations from the classics a la supply chains and more in-depth staff management that are more akin to Bullfrog's original genre-introducing game Theme Park. Most of all the addition of modern sensibilities will be welcome like a clean and easier to use UI, top down camera view for easier building, along with a host of other features. It's still very much in development so there's things that haven't been mentioned yet.
It's being built with Unity so that could go either way, seeing as the engine has some optimization issues especially in the wrong hands. That said, I do hope it works out well for them because I really want this one to be a resounding success. Lastly, you can check out a very early interactive demo - Unity browser plug-in required - they used during their Kickstarter campaign. It's a neat little showcase, but the game appears to be already vastly bigger and better already than what was shown here.
<span class="bold">RollerCoaster Tycoon World</span> (RCT4) - Atari
Not a whole lot is known about it yet even though it's supposed to release early this year - I'm actually expecting a bit of a delay in that release. Yet I've checked on their few blog posts and they do mention some interesting ideas like more expensive restaurants in addition to food stands. The most interesting I read about their approach of coaster building in the latest post where they mention it having the classic grid build AND a more freeform node build for coaster creation. I can definitely see the latter being a rather nice addition. Also instead of paying as you create the track it'll be more like a coaster blueprint mode and you'll only pay once the track is finalized. That does sound very good to me as I've always been annoyed by how much money I was able to lose trying to fix mistakes in my coasters.
As usual, there's a lot of PR bullcrap in those posts but as you can see there are interesting tidbits to be found here and there. I'm definitely intrigued so I will keep checking on those blog posts periodically. I'm definitely interested in the project, but who knows how it'll turn out eventually. It sounds like there should be some interesting online features for it this time around, but I'm hoping they won't force some online requirement on us.
<span class="bold">Coaster Park Tycoon</span> - Frontier
Well, next to nothing is known of this project as of yet since Frontier just announced the existence of this game at the end of January with a supposed release sometime in 2016. I suspect they will build on their experience with RCT3. It'll be interesting to see in what direction they will take that. Though with their Elite shenanigans of late I'm wondering how DRM-ed this one will be. Could go either way.
Bringing us back to the original topic, it does seem like we'll be having a genre revival on our hands soon what with Atari finally making a proper RCT4 - let's just all try to forget that mobile crap happened - Frontier starting to work on their own theme park IP, and an as of yet fairly unkown indie dev working on Parkitect.
Let's just review a little of the info that is available on all three:
<span class="bold">Parkitect</span> - Texel Raptor
Now this to me is the most exciting one as of this moment, mostly due to the fact we know more about it than the other two, most thankfully due to their weekly devlogs that goes fairly in-depth into what they're working on and what may have been tweaked.. Supposed release date is September of this year, but as always this may still end up shifting by a month or two.
Look familiar? Yeah, it does very much appear like the first two RCT games but now in an actual 3D environment. That said, there will be a good number of deviations from the classics a la supply chains and more in-depth staff management that are more akin to Bullfrog's original genre-introducing game Theme Park. Most of all the addition of modern sensibilities will be welcome like a clean and easier to use UI, top down camera view for easier building, along with a host of other features. It's still very much in development so there's things that haven't been mentioned yet.
It's being built with Unity so that could go either way, seeing as the engine has some optimization issues especially in the wrong hands. That said, I do hope it works out well for them because I really want this one to be a resounding success. Lastly, you can check out a very early interactive demo - Unity browser plug-in required - they used during their Kickstarter campaign. It's a neat little showcase, but the game appears to be already vastly bigger and better already than what was shown here.
<span class="bold">RollerCoaster Tycoon World</span> (RCT4) - Atari
Not a whole lot is known about it yet even though it's supposed to release early this year - I'm actually expecting a bit of a delay in that release. Yet I've checked on their few blog posts and they do mention some interesting ideas like more expensive restaurants in addition to food stands. The most interesting I read about their approach of coaster building in the latest post where they mention it having the classic grid build AND a more freeform node build for coaster creation. I can definitely see the latter being a rather nice addition. Also instead of paying as you create the track it'll be more like a coaster blueprint mode and you'll only pay once the track is finalized. That does sound very good to me as I've always been annoyed by how much money I was able to lose trying to fix mistakes in my coasters.
As usual, there's a lot of PR bullcrap in those posts but as you can see there are interesting tidbits to be found here and there. I'm definitely intrigued so I will keep checking on those blog posts periodically. I'm definitely interested in the project, but who knows how it'll turn out eventually. It sounds like there should be some interesting online features for it this time around, but I'm hoping they won't force some online requirement on us.
<span class="bold">Coaster Park Tycoon</span> - Frontier
Well, next to nothing is known of this project as of yet since Frontier just announced the existence of this game at the end of January with a supposed release sometime in 2016. I suspect they will build on their experience with RCT3. It'll be interesting to see in what direction they will take that. Though with their Elite shenanigans of late I'm wondering how DRM-ed this one will be. Could go either way.
