Park Beyond Review – An Early Access Ride of Technical Issues

Theme park simulators have always been one of my favourite pastimes. You know, when you boot the game up in the early hours of the morning and suddenly it is the late afternoon and you’re still managing profits, cleaning up puke and building rollercoasters which defy the laws of physics. Park Beyond aims to break “beyond” the limitations set in place in other simulators. There’s nothing worse than trying to build a rollercoaster to be told “it is too fast” or “too scary”. Essentially, in this game, there’s no limit to how crazy things can get and that’s the big selling point here.

Park Beyond also asks the question “What if?”. What if rides can send people flipping into the air strapped to a rocket only for them to land in a pipe and slide downward as they tunnel through the thrill ride back to the beginning? What if a Ferris Wheel could be dissected into four smaller wheels which carry the capsules high up into the sky?

Of course, these questions are never raised in the real world because of how impossible they are. Surely, someone will die from the impact of a rocket and the giant skyscraper Ferris Wheel will topple over due to its sheer size and weight. But this is a video game so who cares? Park Beyond makes it possible to dream bigger than the box and after a few hours in a park, the creations are truly out of this world.

At its core, it is still a park management game but I enjoyed how the experience tended to lean towards creativity. At the start of each of the eight campaign levels, I was given the opportunity to sit down with my advisers and discuss the planning for the park ahead. At times I was able to choose a demographic which would decide the rides, shops and types of people I would target.

I could also choose my theme for the park. Be it focusing on Western assets, candy-themed objects and more. I was then asked a few questions during the candid business meeting that would determine how much money I started with and the effect it would have on the difficulty.

All of this helped form a managerial role in the game which I haven’t experienced in past theme part simulators. Usually, I would get dropped into a patch of land and given a set of objectives. I simply had to reach them. While this starting portion didn’t drastically change the course of the park, it made me feel important… In charge and like the real owner of the baby I was about to bring into the world.

Park Beyond also pushes its Impossify agenda quite a lot in the game. While the eight campaign stages eased me into the game’s mechanics and at times, locked certain features out, everything essentially relies on the Impossify feature. I could Impossify basically everything in my park. Impossify is basically taking something and enhancing it.

Be it a janitor who gained the ability to vacuum up dustbins in an over-the-top firework style or an entertainer who could then wear a cool-looking costume and attract more fun. Rides that are Impossified then change how they look and perform. The stats they have also get enhanced. For example, the Kraken ride gets a giant Octopus that tossed guests around. It could then get Impossified again and transformed into a large underwater tub.

Impossfied rides make more money, draw more guests and also cost more to run but they level themselves out thanks to the higher profits they can make. It just takes a while to earn the 5 Impossify Pencils needed to level up the ride.

Shops can also be Impossified. This unlocks a unique item that can then be sold at a crazy price. However, only super happy guests will purchase them making it a challenge to obtain.

Rollercoasters are, of course, a large focus on Park Beyond too and there’s a lot of fun to be had here. Unlike Planet Coaster which refuses to open a coaster if it is too scary, Park Beyond let me really go wild with things. Not only can coasters go at speeds of up to 200KM/h but they are also a bit more lenient on bends, spins and everything else.

There was an odd coaster which I had to tone down a bit due to a curve or two being too tight and causing a crash. However, I definitely felt a lot more freedom here to make things as over-the-top as possible.

Modules in the coaster creation system further add a bit of madness to the creation. These come in all sorts of shapes and forms. One was a cannon which shot the cart out of one end and caught it on the other end. Another was a track splitter which separated the cart in two only to have them form up later on in the track.

There’s also an Off-Rail module that let me scoot the cart around the park without any worry about a track. I could even have it glide over large bodies of water.

With all this in mind, creating a rollercoaster still has direction. Modules, speed, intensity and design unlock certain “Hooks” which are like tags that draw in certain demographics. The more intense a ride, made it possible to add the “Intense” Hook. As a result, more “Teens” loved it. These Hooks also forced me to focus on creating a specific experience on the coaster and not slap together a bunch of random stuff just because I could.

Impossifying a rollercoaster adds more hooks, and ups the profit and fun rating. I was hoping for a bit more depth here given how important rollercoasters are in park sims but hey, the game only has a small selection of different coasters so clearly, it wasn’t a focus in the first place.

So once I got the handle on making parks and Impossification, Park Beyond really became about making money and for the most part, that works here. I become obsessed with watching finances, what was making a profit, where I was losing money and how I could make more. When I grew my park too fast, it came to bite me as the shops and rides ended up costing more to run than the money they were making.

Targeting the park’s biggest guest ratio was also key. Making sure the shops I built catered for the adults, teens and families at the time. The rides were the same thing. I won’t lie, I often had to completely cut back on my park by destroying rides and even closing a handful down when times got tough.

These moments provide some excellent business pressure in the game. After three months of debt, I would fail the park. Not only was seeing the red money stressful but Park Beyond also plays this somber music when you’re in debt. It creates this daunting feeling of failure throughout the game. And trust me, I had this happen a lot.

Park Beyond does a great job with all the micromanaging too. Watching sales, visitor counts and cleanliness become a habit. I was forever aiming for a cleaner park with happier guests and more money. If this wasn’t happening, I was forced to investigate why. The more I was failing, the more I was learning why and fixing the issue.

At the end of the campaign, I was micromanaging so much and handling so many features it was exhilarating. But also incredibly stressful.

Unfortunately, Park Beyond does have some issues. Not only is it plagued with bugs but I had problems with how shallow it was too. The limited number of rides and coasters clearly want people to spend money on extra packs.

I also had some nasty technical issues in almost every single campaign stage. One specific bug saw my park level remain at 3 the entire time. Even five years into the stage with a soaring profit and 98% cleanliness, my level stayed at 3. This meant I was restricted to building four rides and three different types of shops. It wasn’t fun at all. I also spent four hours in this stage, I didn’t want to start over again because of this bug.

There are also some nasty performance issues on PS5. The frame rate is all over the place. Opening a tab would also cause stuttering and freezing. Some objectives tasked me to build a coaster through a mountain but the camera made it impossible to place down tracks in the tunnel. I would often feel ill due to how the camera would bug out and spin the screen around while I was trying to get stuff done in the tightest places.

Building pathways and objects is also horrid. Pathways would glitch out causing giant blocks of textures to appear on the ground. It would also be a chore due to how the placement works. It kept telling me I could not place it down because of another intersecting point but there was nothing there. Shops would also cause weird landscaping bugs. It is just a mess.

For what it is, Park Beyond is a fun simulator game but it isn’t ready for launch. I purchased this game to play and review and I don’t think it is where it should be. The shallow content is one thing but the bugs and technical issues feel like early access. Building should not be a chore. This is likely why Planet Coaster remained in early access for so long before finally launching. Park Beyond needed the same treatment.

A game with extra DLC packs and an annual pass already. Meanwhile, it barely got the base game right. This isn’t right. I do hope to revisit Park Beyond in the next few months after some of these issues have been ironed out. However, I recommend for now holding off until it is in a better state.

This Park Beyond review is based on a PS5 copy we purchased for testing. It is out now on PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC.