What kind of theme park would you build if the sky wasn’t a limit to your creation? Would that park seem impossible? That’s the core principle behind Park Beyond, a theme park simulator published by Bandai Namco and developed by Limbic Entertainment. Not only is the sky no longer a limit for Limbic and players alike with Park Beyond, but the entire build process has been kitted out with the idea of being ‘impossified’.
Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, Playstation 5, PC
Price: $49.99
Genre: Simulation
Developers: Limbic Entertainment
Players: 1
Campaign length: 15-20 hours
Launch date: June 16, 2023
Review code provided by Bandai Namco. Reviewed on Xbox Series X.
The developers for Park Beyond, Limbic Entertainment, were previously responsible for the comedic dictator simulator known as Tropico 6. I’ve got a long and complicated history with playing the simulator genre with a controller on a console, and in general, I tend to stress about that element of gameplay when I pick up a new management simulator. Simulators and controllers, simply put, do not get along. Limbic’s history with creating strategy and simulators for consoles in the past, however, translates to a smoother controller experience with Park Beyond than I was originally expecting.
It was nice to see that despite being a menu-heavy genre, Limbic managed to create a management simulator for Xbox where the control scheme was easy to learn and the menus were not cluttered.
Park Beyond review—Art and performance
Set among a variety of different theme parks, Park Beyond embraces a vibrant and saturated color palette. And yet, despite the heavy and abundant use of bold colors, at no point does Park Beyond appear drab or like the colors on the screen are competing for your attention. There are just enough pastel tones to keep the scenery in harmony while still making it easy to see the different park elements, even when your map is cluttered.
Cluttered maps came with a problem all their own, however, and there were some instances when the game would crash to the dashboard during campaign gameplay. Most of my experiences with these soft crashes were during long gameplay sessions where I was frequently editing pathways around my park. Whenever I found myself deleting or adding long stretches of pathways I would inevitably get to a point where the game would stop responding to inputs and then close to the Xbox dashboard.
I’m not too keen on holding crashes like these against a game during its review phase because there’s always the potential that a day one patch could launch post review and fix whatever issue was causing my crashing. Especially in the case of Park Beyond where I only crashed twice across more than 15 hours of play time. It’s likely something that will be fixed later down the road, but it is still an issue that needs to be addressed, nonetheless.
Park Beyond review—Story
The story begins with players in control of a bright-eyed creative person who spends their day sketching out seemingly impossible rollercoaster ideas. After folding one of these ideas into a paper airplane and chucking it out the window, it finds itself at the feet of Blaize, the plucky thrill seeker who puts our protagonist in a chance meeting with amusement park enthusiast Phil and tight-lipped CEO Izzy. Both are willing to invest in your big ideas, albeit one will give you cannons and the other just gives you money. Yes, you read that right—cannons.
Park Beyond features a full campaign with 8 different chapters where players will face the challenges of running theme parks with different conditions that they will need to overcome in order to move on. Early chapters in the campaign are a stand-in for a tutorial, and even players who want to just enjoy the game’s sandbox mode should consider finishing at least the first 3 missions. It's during these missions that players get a grasp on park management basics along with the ins and outs of roller coaster construction. Impossification also plays a major role early on, with players learning the ins and outs of bringing their theme park to life.
With the help of a plucky engineer named Sophia, players can impossify nearly everything within the confines of their theme park. This can mean adding unique elements to roller coasters, such as the aforementioned cannons, or unique railing that can allow your coaster to traverse water features like lakes and ponds. Launch pads, animated kraken limbs, launching your guests into the air strapped into discs, customizable mascots, even the dang janitors can be impossified as long as you’ve got the fun rating to earn it.
A pencil is visible at the top right of your screen throughout your playtime. As your park increases its fun rating the points generated will allow for a certain number of Impossification points. It only takes one impossification point to customize employees, but improving your shops takes two while flat/thrill rides and rollercoasters both require five.
Park Beyond review—Gameplay
Park Beyond goes out of its way to give players every opportunity to get as wild and out of control with their theme park rides as is reasonably possible. Classic coaster-building games often struggled with balancing physics and player imagination, and it wasn’t until you tanked your park’s rating by violently crashing your guests after opening what should’ve been the best ride ever would you find out you’d made an error. Throughout the duration of your time constructing a track a little ghost cart will loop along what you’ve built so you can monitor for problems long before you open the gates and send your patrons flying to the moon. It's such a small quality-of-life adjustment on the surface, but it makes all the difference to building your rides without sacrificing safety and customer happiness.
Every tool is at your disposal, from terraforming to paint to the colors of your employees’ uniforms and what music is played near your rides. Once you’ve got a handle on the basics (thanks to the tutorial missions) the remainder of the campaign can be approached as a set of challenges, or you can jump into the game’s Sandbox mode to take full control of your park as you see fit.
When it comes to finishing the campaign, players are eventually tasked with sitting in on pitch meetings after they’ve had a quick look over the upcoming park. During these pitches the player is given the opportunity to answer questions from the cast of characters that may influence the challenges for the mission ahead. If you prefer to bill flat rides over roller coasters, for example, you may pitch that idea during one of these pre-mission briefings. In some cases, the pitch meetings can make the upcoming mission easier or more difficult depending on your choices, however, the game will always warn you in advance when a decision may affect gameplay.
Park Beyond review—Conclusion
Limbic Entertainment knows what they are doing when it comes to crafting a well-rounded simulation game around a controller. Everything about Park Beyond is manageable and concise. From its profit and loss stat sheets to employee customization, to its freedom of construction the game really is a love letter to classic theme park management games without being burdened by the weight of nostalgia at the same time. Limbic takes this classic gameplay and brings it to modern audiences with plenty of fresh and unique twists.
There are certainly some hiccups, such as the occasional crashes to the dashboard. And I think it's a fair assessment that the lack of a proper challenge mode is disheartening. The campaign missions are replayable and the difficulty can be adjusted by making different choices during the pitch meetings. As previously mentioned, Sandbox mode does allow for some customization that can provide challenges if you’d like, but at the end of the day there are modern theme park simulators like Planet Coaster that do offer replayable challenges designed by the developers, and the absence of that from Park Beyond is noticed.
Even without a specific challenge mode in play, Park Beyond was well worth the time I spent playing the game. I am actively looking forward to sitting down and testing the limits of impossification on my Xbox Series X even more in the coming weeks.
