{"id":667,"date":"2014-06-26T01:11:52","date_gmt":"2014-06-26T00:11:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/moononastick.com\/blog\/?p=667"},"modified":"2015-01-29T23:50:48","modified_gmt":"2015-01-29T23:50:48","slug":"zen-and-the-art-of-rollercoaster-tycoon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moononastick.com\/blog\/2014\/06\/zen-and-the-art-of-rollercoaster-tycoon\/","title":{"rendered":"Zen and the Art of RollerCoaster Tycoon"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been rediscovering RollerCoaster Tycoon (2) over the past few days, after a long time away from it. \u00a0It was partly prompted by this video<\/a>\u00a0analysing the genius of the level\u00a0design in the original RCT.<\/p>\n

Today I played the\u00a0“European Cultural Festival<\/span>” scenario, an interesting one where you start with a basic park, divided into five zones themed around different European countries (it’s from the\u00a0Wacky Worlds<\/em> expansion pack, and makes heavy use of that pack’s new scenery).<\/p>\n

\"rct-european-start\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The beginning park is truly\u00a0beautiful, but haemorrhaging cash when you take it over. There are few big\u00a0attractions, a surfeit\u00a0of staff, and path layouts which result in guests constantly getting lost. After a first attempt which was working out to be a miserable failure, I reset in order to\u00a0concentrate from the start on making the park more manageable for both myself and the guests. This actually involved cutting off the British zone entirely (it was gorgeously themed, but only had one ride and a tonne of twisty little paths). There was so much to be done elsewhere, I hadn’t\u00a0even re-opened it by the Year 4 end of the scenario.<\/p>\n

Even with this I was struggling. My strategy this time had been to keep my loan as low as possible (due to the punishing interest rate) and concentrate on building up smaller rides and lots of shops whilst rationalising the pathing. The Russian section particularly was looking great. I was also keen to try and keep to the themes.<\/p>\n

\"rct-european-russia\"<\/a><\/p>\n

However this hadn’t been enough, and partway through Year 3 I was still well off the goal of 2000 guests.\u00a0At that point I decided to just go for broke, maxed out my loan, and spent a (relative) lot of money on building my trusty\u00a0triple launched\u00a0corkscrew coaster in the French zone.<\/p>\n

\"rct-european-france\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Not big or clever, but the Tricolore theme\u00a0made it seem fitting. And what do you know, it started to bring the peeps pouring in.\u00a0It may sound stupid, but I’d\u00a0forgotten just how important actually\u00a0building rollercoasters\u00a0<\/strong>is\u00a0in\u00a0RollerCoaster Tycoon. That in turn meant more guests spending money at shops, and it wasn’t long before I was starting to pay down my loan.\u00a0Before the end of the game it was below what I’d started with.<\/p>\n

So I guess there’s two lessons here, and they\u00a0can probably apply equally to RollerCoaster Tycoon and to real life:<\/p>\n