Gamescom 2022 may be the biggest Gamescom yet, with just its Opening Night Live ceremony offering two whole hours of non-stop game reveals and trailers. Everything from small Indies to large-scale AAA games made an appearance during the event, and Limbic Entertainment's Park Beyond fits comfortably in the middle of the pack.
Theme park simulators have, rather surprisingly, been a staple of the gaming genre ever since the early days of PC gaming, with Theme Park making waves in 1994. Soon after, the Rollercoaster Tycoon franchise made its debut, becoming one of the most popular sim franchises of all time. Nowadays, Frontier's Planet Coaster has taken the top spot, bringing the theme park sim genre to the modern day while still retaining the charm of those original Rollercoaster Tycoon games. But Planet Coaster is about to receive some competition, as Park Beyond is set to enter the ring in 2023, and its defining feature may take some inspiration from EA's Spore.
Bringing Spore's Creative Freedom to Park Beyond
Released in 2008, Spore was developed by Maxis, the same studio behind the immensely popular Sims franchise. Before release, Spore was being touted as a true next-generation game, offering more creative freedom than any other video game before it. Players would apparently be able to create their own species of alien and evolve them over time, creating a whole civilization of their own creation. While Spore didn't quite live up to its lofty marketing and expectations due to some overly simplistic mechanics, the game did still offer most of the same gameplay it promised.
In actuality, players could still oversee the creation of their own species of alien and evolve them from microscopic beings to sentient creatures, building their civilization from makeshift huts all the way up to space exploration. One of Spore's defining traits was its unprecedented level of creative freedom. Taking the lessons it had learned from The Sims, Maxis was able to give players an incredibly detailed species creator tool, which allowed players to create a truly unique and original alien design. And through the evolution mechanic, these aliens would become even more user-specific. Players could either make the most gracious and beautiful alien creatures imaginable, or the most cursed.
Based on the latest trailer revealed at Gamescom Opening Night Live, it seems as though Park Beyond is going to be drawing some inspiration from Spore in this regard. This latest trailer showed off Park Beyond's primary gimmick, its creative freedom, the feature that sets it apart from competitors like Planet Coaster. In Park Beyond, players will be able to construct each individual building in their park from the ground up, choosing its color palette, the type of material used, and its external decorations. Each individual floor of a building can also be customized. These floors can then be saved and combined via a modular building tool, ensuring that every building in the player's park is wholly unique.
This modular building mechanic will let players create a vast range of buildings fairly easily, and the sheer amount of customization for each of the building's individual components allows players to make their theme park as horrifyingly absurd or as sleek and refined as they'd like. This modular building tool will also streamline placing individual ride decorations while still giving players plenty of freedom in how it all looks. Though Planet Coaster has a plethora of building tools, Park Beyond's system seems to be leaning more into outlandish and wacky designs, which seems like a smart move.
Park Beyond is set for a 2023 release on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.
