➤ The playground designer 🎮

Theme Park Studio seems to be like a beautiful children's story that ended up in a bloodbath. We are in 2013 and Pantera launches the project of a playground editor on Kickstarter. Almost two thousand people decide to finance it and make it come true. The game, if we want to call it that, is launched in Steam Early Access on February 27, 2014. Almost three years have passed since then and the final version has finally arrived. In the meantime, the genre of playground simulators, not very popular at the time, has been enriched with new and very valid competitors: the complex but complete Parkitect, the hideous RollerCoaster Tycoon World and the excellent Planet Coaster.

In short, the orphaned fans of the RollerCoaster Tycoon series suddenly had a choice. Meanwhile, the title of Pantera Entertainment has practically stopped, apart from a series of updates that have maddened the buyers of the first hour. Let's clarify immediately: Theme Park Studio is not a video game in the canonical sense. Starting it you will find yourself in front of something more like an application, moreover very complex. The aim is to build amusement parks, but that goes no further, as there is no economic simulation. At the end of the work, the park opens and visitors are watched crowding it, but without having to worry about tickets sold or fail miserably because maybe a roller coaster in the shape of a gigantic penis has been built. In short, the most strictly playful part does not exist, except going around admiring your own work or that of others. The latest updates in particular were dedicated to the implementation of VR functions. For the most critics, resources have been wasted, given that among the game's buyers there are very few who have a viewer (perhaps they were hoping to sell a few more copies). Obviously there was no lack of criticism from the community, which did not look favorably on the work of the development team on a new feature, when there was still a lot to do on the base title.

More an application than a video game, Theme Park Studio is finally complete and we have reviewed it

Playground for whom?

Finally, however, Theme Park Studio is out and it is difficult to say that it is not what it wants to be: the most complex and complete editor of playgrounds on the market. The problem is that it is not possible to frame it in terms of use, in the sense that as an editor it is far too complex for an audience that is not ultra-dedicated. We are not talking about the average player of any RollerCoaster Tycoon, but about someone who really dreams of designing a playground. In Theme Park Studio, even placing a road is a complicated operation: you choose the segment, define its characteristics, attach it to an anchor point, manipulate it to adapt it to the project you have in mind and then move on to the next segment.

In some moments it seems to be working with professional software, even if it must be said that many of these have much more intuitive interfaces than the title of Pantera Entertainment. In short, it is true that you can change many parameters that competitors dream of, such as those related to the physics of attractions, or to the paths to be followed by visitors, it just doesn't make much sense to do so. It's like someone created the editor of a game that doesn't exist. At this point, talking about the outline of Theme Park Studio is not secondary, since it is a title that can only survive if it has an active and productive community. Unfortunately, this is currently not the case. In the Steam Workshop you can find something, but it is limited to a handful of interesting works, which you can quickly see. Probably many have been held back by the excessive difficulty of creating a complete park, which requires many hours and, initially, the consultation of the substantial tutorials offered. However, it must be said that some custom attractions are better than the default ones, with the latter being considered as a mere starting point. Think that Theme Park Studio allows you to import meshes and models made outside the game and animate them, as if it were a real graphics engine. Nice, too bad we're always there: who is it for? One who is able to create and animate the 3D model of a carousel will hardly devote his time to Theme Park Studio for glory, while the average user won't even understand what the hell we're talking about. Above all: if one is able to make the 3D model of a carousel and animate it, he can directly build the entire park in the 3D graphics program he is using ... it would have even more outlets to show it!

The competition

Another big problem of Pantera Entertainment's title is the aforementioned competition and not only due to the fact that Planet Coaster and Parkitect (RollerCoaster Tycoon World we leave it alone because it is horrendous) allow you to manage the park that has been built, but also because with less effort in Planet Coaster you get results much more beautiful to see than those of Theme Park Studio.

In short, the title of Frontier surpasses that of Pantera for graphic quality, with the latter appearing old and outdated even in front of the not excellent RollerCoaster Tycoon World. Sure, the greater number of features of Theme Park Studio allow you to create anything, but no matter how hard you try you will never get a result as impactful as that obtained by learning to use the title editor of Frontier, which relies on a much more advanced graphics engine. Let's also say that the visitors of Planet Coaster are equipped with their own artificial intelligence and move naturally around the parks, while those of Theme Park Studio follow preset paths (you can also modify these, just to add complexity to the whole) and have some really woody animations. In short, the comparison is quite merciless. Let it be clear that we do not want to diminish how much good the Pantera editor is able to offer, we only believe that it is right that at the end of the reading you are aware of what you are in front of and that you shouldn't expect a Theme Park heir, but more a distant cousin of Maya 3D or Photoshop. If the idea intrigues you, then buy it, otherwise forget it and look elsewhere.

PC System Requirements

Test Setup

Intel Core i7-4770 processor
16 GB of RAM
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 video card
Windows 10 operating system

Minimum requirements

Windows XP or later operating system
Processore 2.2 GHz dual core
2 GB of RAM
Nvidia 8800 GPU video card
DirectX 9.0
5 GB of hard disk space

Recommended Requirements

3 GB RAM

Comment

Digital Delivery Steam Price 27,99 € Resources4Gaming.com

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Readers (2)

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Your vote

Theme Park Studio is not a video game but an application. We have no doubts that someone might be interested, but we struggle to recommend it to those who are perhaps looking for a new Theme Park or something alternative to games like Planet Coaster or Parkitect. Although the theme is the same, Pantera Entertainment's title has very different goals. Take this into consideration only if you want to design a park down to the smallest detail, checking everything: from the individual pieces of the attractions, to the color of the sky. If, on the other hand, you are looking for a playground-themed video game, change the carousel.