Waterpark Simulator: Making a Splash in Simulation

Intro

Sometimes you sort mail, other times you wander through facilities unknown to man-kind, but today we're doing another different style review. In order to make a splash, we booted up this next game in their new multiplayer 1.0 update. Waterpark simulator is a simulation game where you own, operate, and create the madness however you like in a, you guessed it, waterpark. The game was developed and published by CayPlay.

Body

When you boot up the game and start a new playthrough, you are given two starting location options, the city and the beach. There are also a few settings you can access to change the difficulty, permissions for what other players can do, etc. Speaking of other players, you can have up to three other players with you. For the purpose of my biggest playthrough, I had one friend for the majority of the playthrough. There are many easter eggs scattered throughout the map that you can go see and laugh at with friends, including cameos of YouTubers and special guests.

Waterpark Simulator is a game that seems to combine aspects of the likes of RollerCoaster Tycoon, and Supermarket Simulator, where you can enter a build mode, and you must operate the facilities until you get employees. Mechanically speaking, it is a mishmash of random things thrown together, but that is why it works. At the core, you have a ticket station to run. You also have customers who will do bad things or get in trouble like drowning guests, panicking guests, stinky guests, guests who don't pay, etc. You have to balance and choose what comes first in this game. With multiple people, this gets easier as you delegate tasks in the early game. Eventually you can ultimately automate most things with employees, but until you get to that point, you are doing it on your own. Employees also have breaks, meaning you'll always have to step in a few times a day.

You have several ways of dealing with bad customers: you can beat them, shove them, or even taze them if you are feeling particularly angry that day. You also can just hire a guard to chase them down. I won't lie, some of the most fun was seeing a guard spawn camp someone with a sledge hammer. The game really doesn't take itself seriously in this regard, you can pretty much do whatever you however you want. Wanna bully customers? Do so! Want to hit everyone with a rubber duck gun? It has that too! You can literally force people to break a leg by placing the diving board wrong, we'll go more into that a bit later.

A lot of the minigames or tasks you have to do are fairly easy. Doing tickets just means selecting age range, number of hours staying, and if they wanna use the slides or not. Need to give food out? Pick up the required item, put the requested condiment, sauce, flavor, or ice and hand it to them. The only one I found confusing, was the sauna. The game simply asks you to pick up a ladle, and I had a skill issue of not realizing where this was. The item in the sauna did not highlight nor did it look like I could pick it up. Other than that, things are pretty simple, it only becomes chaotic once you have multiple food stands, a ticket stall, bad guests coming in, and someone went to a waterpark not knowing how to swim in the shallowest of pools imaginable.

My absolute favorite part of this game though are the slides. You can build your own slides to varying degrees dependent on your park star level. I easily spent the majority of my 38 hours making death contraptions that defied the laws of physics. One tip I can give for you custom slide creators out there, the longer the slide, the more money they tip you! You can also paint these slides as well as everything else, but I am no decorator so most of my slides came out either looking like an epileptic's worst nightmare, or a solid-colored slide you'd see at a playground.

The build mode of this game is pretty finnicky at times. The camera does not zoom out or in enough, the objects have strange collision with entry points that can make them a pain to place, and in multiplayer, if the host puts down something, there is a chance your friends will not see what you placed. It was rather fun placing down random things, climbing on top of that said thing, and seeing my friend confused why I was floating mid-air. Once you get to late game, the build mode can become more of an annoyance than a help. You'll often find yourself struggling to make custom slides go high into the air, or struggling to find just the right pixel to get an item to actually place. Sometimes if you like to get fancy, you can decorate how you want, but do keep in mind to be careful with in pool decorations, as I found that the diving boards will break if the guest jumps off too close to the decoration and will become injured and fine you.

The graphics of this game follow the motto of keeping it silly. It is not realistic by any means and will feel a bit strange when you first boot up. There was only a single difference when I changed graphical qualities and that was how shiny your attractions are. At night however, I was wowed by the slow light-up of all the slides and pools I placed. It has a certain charm to it that can bring nostalgia for your favorite waterparks when it dims. I do also have to give praise to the jukebox as it has some high-quality songs in it that can spice up the day and night.

Conclusion

Waterpark Simulator is not a game that expects you to take it seriously, therefore there is not any story, or real goal aside from a top tier waterpark. It is a game that expects chaos, gives you the tools for that chaos, and says have fun. It does have a lot of bugs but in the end, its one of those things that you don't mind because it adds to the experience. It is like playing The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, or Fallout 3. You know it won't be a super polished experience but you enjoy it because it knows how to keep the player engaged, and the best part is that you get to experience this with others, no mods required! That is why this game gets an 8.5 from me. You aren't getting a game of the year, but you are getting a pretty good laugh for a good while with friends.