The RollerCoaster Tycoon series has had more ups and downs than… well, you can figure out such a painfully obvious analogy for yourself.
The original 1999 game, created by Scottish programmer Chris Sawyer, may not have been the first attempt at an amusement park management sim – after all, Theme Park had been released five years earlier – but its level of detail was stunning at the time.
RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 followed in 2002 and added a greater emphasis on verticality, making it easier to place rides higher in the air or underground. Then Sawyer handed the keys over to Frontier Developments for RollerCoaster Tycoon 3, which took the series 3D for the first time.
Since the release of that third game in 2004, however, it’s fair to say the RollerCoaster Tycoon series has only done well when it’s looked back to its past successes, rather than offering anything new.
A 3DS spin-off in 2012 was basic and clunky, a mobile attempt (bravely titled RollerCoaster Tycoon 4, implying it was the fourth main game) was riddled with microtransactions and wait timers, and 2016’s RollerCoaster Tycoon World was an awful PC-only release which looked ugly and performed poorly.
Indeed, in recent years the only success Atari has had with the series is its re-releases of the original trilogy, in the shape of RollerCoaster Tycoon Classic (which bundles the first two games) and RollerCoaster Tycoon 3: Complete Edition. They continue to be great, but it does mean fans (myself included) have had nothing new – well, nothing new that’s any good, at least – for more than two decades now.
This could finally change with RollerCoaster Tycoon Wonderworks, an all-new entry in the series which promises to hark back to its original glory days while introducing some new features of its own. After being shown an hour-long demo of the game behind closed doors at Gamescom, I’m happy to say the early signs are good.
The first positive sign is that the game is being developed by Springloaded Games, the studio behind the enjoyable Let’s Build a Zoo and its ambitious upcoming RPG spin-off Let’s Build a Dungeon. This is a team that’s handled management simulation games before, so there’s a pedigree involved.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.videogameschronicle.com/features/rollercoaster-tycoon-wonderworks-may-finally-be-the-great-new-entry-fans-have-waited-20-years-for/
