Does this theme park sim go off the rails?

Parkitect is a business simulation game that charges you with the construction and management of theme parks.

The original Parkitect came out on PC back in 2018 and received two expansions since it’s launch. It’s now 2024 and it finally arrives on consoles as a Deluxe Edition, but is it worthy of being called that?

I’ve loved designing my own theme parks ever since the original Theme Park on Mega Drive. There have been some great ones over the years like Rollercoaster Tycoon and more recently Planet Coaster to name a few. So where does Parkitect end up?

While ticking a lot of the boxes you would expect it to, Parkitect does have its issues. First and foremost is that it doesn’t feel like it’s been fully optimised for consoles, but feels like a PC game with controller support added. It can be glitchy at times and has a few technical hiccups from time to time. There was an issue with save data vanishing but it seems to have been resolved with the latest patch, at least hopefully.

The good news is that there’s plenty for you to do besides just building your own theme park. There’s a campaign mode with different scenarios for you to complete which shows you can’t become too complacent with your own idea of how a theme park should run. But if that’s not your cup of tea, then you can easily jump into free play and design it however you please.

The visuals are impressive and the framerate is mostly solid. The glitchy elements are sporadic, but are getting better with updates and hopefully will continue to do so with more patches. The soundtrack gets the job done and the user interface is easy to get to grips with, even if the text can sometimes by terribly small.

The Verdict

Parkitect: Deluxe Edition does a decent job in bringing the 2018 PC game to consoles. It does have its share of technical issues, but they are slowly improving with each update. If you can’t wait in line for your next ride, then this is worth the price of admission.

Score: 8.0

Disclosure: I received a free review copy of this product from https://www.keymailer.co