T w e n t y S i d e d

I spent a lot of time the last few weeks talking about the intuitive difficulty curve of RollerCoaster Tycoon. With few exceptions, a new player can quickly grasp the basics of the game and even start experimenting with different tactics to win the long list of scenarios. By contrast, 2001’s Tropico features a scenario list of inconsistent difficulty bordering on bugged labels and practically non-existent tutorials. Further, the game shipped and received multiple expansions with incorrect information in the manual and the game’s info text. How in the world did Tropico not only become a beloved classic but manage to generate sequels through 2019, with Tropico 7 still in development (though apparently troubled)? I think mainly aesthetics, tongue-in-cheek humor, and quite simply; despite the obvious failures, brilliant functionality that makes the game *fun* to play…even if you aren’t accomplishing anything.

In fact, especially if you aren’t accomplishing anything: Tropico 1 had a free-play mode where you just built whatever you wanted. It wasn’t an absolute sandbox; you still had to meet various tiered requirements. There was no technology tree, but you had to build (i.e. *complete* the building of) a Logging Camp before you could build a Lumber Mill, and you had to build a Power Plant along with the Lumber Mill before you built a Furniture Manufacturer. Oh, and of course you had to have enough high-school-educated workers available to staff the Lumber Mill and the Furniture Manufacturer, which means you better already have a High School built; those aren’t free. And you have to have student Housing since they aren’t working enough to pay rent. Food from your Farms and Fisheries are always share-and-share-alike for your Tropicans, which automatically makes the United States a bit suspicious of you, so you better have that Furniture Manufacturer shipping out copious rattan chairs and cheap end-tables for the American consumer. That means you will probably have to keep the workers’ pay high, but if the income disparity between the uneducated and the high school and college educated workers grows too much, the Soviet Union may come knocking on your door. I’m sure you don’t want a worker revolution to kick off. Regardless of all that, your Tropican citizens really just want access to food, religion, entertainment, health care, and decent-quality housing that doesn’t cost too much.

Tropico is a wonderfully complex game that fails almost completely at handing you simple, understandable control over this mess. But gosh is it fun.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “A Beautiful Mess: Why There Shouldn’t Have Been a Tropico 2”

Paige Francis He/him

I completed the RollerCoaster Tycoon base game last week and started working on the first expansion, Corkscrew Follies. Two things were immediately apparent. First, Corkscrew Follies employs the same challenges and difficulties as the base game, but provides different and additional rides and shops to meet a scenario’s demands. In fact, the research tree will tend to focus on the new elements more than the old elements, requiring you to learn to use the new facilities. The second obvious change was the implementation of scenery and ground elements to represent artificial structures like castles and a variety of other buildings, really enhancing the “themed” idea of your amusement park. Honestly, I had previously associated this change with RollerCoaster Tycoon 2. Probably because I played a lot of the RCT2 base game before I obtained the expansion packs for RollerCoaster Tycoon. It was interesting to see where RCT2’s theming came from. It becomes clear, seeing how these ideas were originally implemented, how the building structures in RCT2 are really the same thing…just with “land” that is invisible (and intangible and non-obtrusive in most situations, if I remember correctly. In RCT, there still has to be a physical piece of land which retains it’s inherent properties to apply the “appearance” of walls, ceilings, etc. to.) Unfortunately, while interesting, I never found this part of the game to be as captivating as the core park management gameplay. A big reason why I never spent all that much time in RollerCoaster Tycoon 2.

Upon realizing I was mainly dealing with cosmetic differences, I started getting a bit bored with RollerCoaster Tycoon, and went looking for other games to mix in…all sim games, of course.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “RCT’s Final Challenges, and Other Sim Games”

Paige Francis He/him

After learning the basics of RollerCoaster Tycoon, the game now runs you through scenario after scenario increasing the perceived difficulty by tightening and eventually combining restrictions. These restrictions all follow simple ideas:

• Decreasing the available space
• Increasing the difficulty of using the underlying terrain
• Starting with a functional park that is handicapped with pre-existing limitations or problems
• Unusual or arbitrary restrictions, including restricting the amount of money available over the course of the scenario

These particular difficulties carry the game through all of the original scenarios. Everything but monetary restrictions are stated or obvious, making that last detail a bit of a surprise when you encounter it. So let’s take a look at the various routes, which start immediately after the 5th scenario, Evergreen Gardens.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “RollerCoaster Tycoon’s Second Gear”

Paige Francis He/him