Review — Park Beyond

Let your imagination run wild and build the impossible as you create the theme park of your dreams in Park Beyond.

Please note that we’re trying a new review format where we make getting an impression of our thoughts about a game more easily to scan and digest. We’re categorising our findings in what we call WGBU: the Wonderful, the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

😁 The Wonderful

• Absolutely nothing I’m afraid.

🙂 The Good

• The game’s introduction is engaging, fun, and pantomime-like, setting a unique and light-hearted tone.
• Park Beyond’s “impossification” mechanic adds a fresh and absurd twist to the theme park genre, allowing players to build extravagant, over-the-top rides and amenities.
• Flat rides in the game offer pleasing visuals, and their “impossified” versions provide hilariously exaggerated and themed designs.
• The park management aspect is quite straightforward with a simple set of variables (profit, fun, amazement, cleanliness) to track.
• You can create quite a few ‘bonkers’ rollercoasters within an environment that is not typical for rollercoaster tycoon games.

😒 The Bad

• A major issue is the management system that seems at odds with the initial promise of freedom and whimsicality. It is as though the player is handed a paintbrush to create an imaginative masterpiece, but is then directed to paint by numbers. The freedom to build and manage the park appears to be curtailed by a system that should have been designed to foster creativity rather than limit it.
• The ‘guest rejection’ system is a glaring design flaw that contradicts player expectation and rewards. It’s counterintuitive for a game to disincentivize the creation of exciting, appealing attractions, especially when the system operates in an opaque manner. This diminishes player satisfaction and creates an unwelcome roadblock in an otherwise entertaining game.
• The concept of ‘impossification’ is fascinating, but its implementation is flawed. It becomes a luxury players can’t afford due to its escalating cost, which seems counterproductive for a game that prides itself on the absurdity of its rides. Players should be encouraged to indulge in the joy of creating outrageous rides, rather than being penalized for it.

🫣 The Ugly

• I can’t speak for the PC version, but on console (I played on Xbox) the controls are incredibly frustrating and make for an experience you often want to force quit the game.
• As the park expands, the unpredictable AI behavior becomes a source of frustration. It’s as if the guests in the park are set on a path of self-sabotage, ignoring popular rides in favor of less appealing ones. This unpredictability of guest preferences sours the experience, turning park management into a guessing game rather than a strategic challenge.
• The numerous bugs and issues with the management tools are a significant problem, turning what should be a playful and light-hearted gaming experience into a frustrating struggle. It’s like being handed a toolbox where half of the tools are either broken or don’t function as expected.
• The pathing issues and inability to direct staff to specific problem areas are glaring omissions in a park management game. Guests getting stuck at junctions and litter piling up without any ability to intervene adds to a sense of powerlessness that contradicts the role of a park manager.
• The toilet fee reset mechanic is a baffling design decision. It’s as though the game is arbitrarily deciding to trip up the player, adding an unforeseen and illogical challenge. The game undermines the player’s control over their park’s finances, leading to unexpected losses and frustration.

Park Beyond is nothing but beyond frustrating, where a decent idea has been rushed and both under and over engineered, resulting in a game that promises you fun at the start but fails to deliver as time goes on.

1.5/5

Reviewed on Xbox Series X
Download code provided by the publisher.