Parkitect: Deluxe Edition – PS5 Review

Parkitect: Deluxe Edition might not look extra fancy, but it has a surprising amount of stuff to offer for park-building players. This game where you run theme parks originally came out for computers in 2018 and is finally here for consoles, both for Xbox and Playstation and I got the chance to try out the PS5 edition.

The basic idea is easy to understand: you get to design, build, and run a bunch of theme parks. Your goal is to make money by keeping people happy and spending their cash. This means doing things like hiring workers, figuring out where to put everything in the park, placing shops and rides in good spots, and making awesome roller coasters. The game mixes playing like a real park manager with making things fun and realistic. You’ll start small and slowly grow your park, being careful with your money. There’s a ton of info you can look at, from how much people are spending to where all the people are walking in the park.

What really makes Parkitect stand out is how much detail you can control and how much you can change things. You can adjust almost anything, from how fast the rides go to the color of pretty much anything in the park. There’s a huge list of decorations you can pick from, so you can build special areas with themes like haunted houses or Wild West towns. You can change the ground however you want, add water features, and the best part is you can put most things almost anywhere you like.

The campaign mode is well-made, offering a variety of parks that are already built with different starting points and challenges. Some parks already have things built and need to be expanded, while others give you unique areas to build in. This keeps things interesting and stops the game from feeling repetitive. The Deluxe Edition comes with two extra content packs, adding even more themed places and rides.

One interesting thing Parkitect adds is that you don’t want park visitors to see your workers doing their jobs. This means building special paths behind the scenes for your workers to use, so they can get where they need to go without bumping into visitors. Deliveries and places for your workers to take breaks need to be placed carefully and maybe even hidden with plants or trees.

Building roller coasters, water rides, and other rides with tracks is where Parkitect can get tricky. Even though the controls are mostly easy to use, it can be tough to snap the pieces of track together smoothly. It takes practice and patience to learn how to design good roller coasters, and the fact you can’t zoom in and out a lot while building them can be annoying.

Even though the controls for some things can be a bit wonky, Parkitect is a game you can easily spend hours playing. Planning and building the ultimate theme park, all the way down to picking the color of your workers’ uniforms, is strangely fun and keeps you wanting to play more. You’ll also need to be good at thinking ahead, looking at all the info, and changing how you run things to make the most money. Even after playing for a long time, the game can still surprise you with new details and a constant stream of new rides to unlock.

Both extra content packs offer more stuff to do. “Booms and Blooms” focuses on decorations, while “Taste of Adventure” adds new rides and ten brand new scenarios. These scenarios are especially well-designed, offering unique challenges that will test your park-building skills. If you enjoy the main game, the extra content is worth considering, especially “Taste of Adventure” for its interesting scenarios.