Certainly, it feels like it might have a bit more strategic meat on its bones compared to Frontier's uneven Planet Coaster - a game Park Beyond apes a lot, particularly in terms of the feel and functionality of its extensive customisation and creation tools, from its modular building to its sausage-wrangling pathing. The sense after a bit of a play around, then, is that there's real potential here, and that Park Beyond might be able to find a comfortable place alongside its genre peers, even without that impossification gimmick. Watch on YouTube Park Beyond - Announcement Trailer. And for those that like to really get stuck in - maximising traffic flow and visitor need fulfilment through hyper-efficient park lay-outs and economy engines - Limbic hasn't skimped, providing feedback tools, heatmaps and more.

Park managers will need to keep an eye on social trends, for instance, in case, say, a health craze causes visitors to steer clear of your fast food stalls. The good news, though, is that having spent an (admittedly relatively brief) bit of time dabbling around in Park Beyond's work-in-progress sandbox, it appears there's a pretty solid management sim beneath all this impossification business, with Limbic having included the kind of strategic wrinkles and micromanagement options that help keep things interesting. Here, impossification does demand a little more thought - sharp turns after an airborne landing are a big no-no, for instance - but, aside from a pleasing dollop of whimsy, it's hard to really see what meaningful substance impossification might bring. It's the same for rollercoasters, which, in the press build, could be impossified with the likes of ramps and cannons, blasting cars into the air to traverse lakes, buildings, and more. Watch on YouTube Park Beyond - Modular Building Trailer.Īesthetically, it's fantastic, lending an air of absurdist wonder to proceedings, but, in real terms, all that appears to means for your park is that rides get a bit of a stat boost with each new impossification upgrade, becoming a little more exciting, generating a little more money, becoming more costly in upkeep, and so on. Amazement can then be spent at certain thresholds to make increasingly reality defying upgrades - a classic pirate ship swing ride might suddenly gain the ability to split in three, each section whirling in loops independently of the other, while an octopus-themed attraction might come alive, its tentacles hoisting up ride cars and plunging visitors into watery depths for additional thrills. Rides, shops, and even employees can be 'impossified' by building a park sufficiently capable of wowing visitors and generating Amazement.

Based on an early build given to press ahead of Gamescom, though, Park Beyond's impossification gimmick is, perhaps not unsurprisingly, a fun if rather inessential addition to the theme park management genre. The result is a game where players can build impossible, gravity defying rides, bringing Till Nowak's wonderful short The Centrifuge Brain Project to mind.

Park Beyond's big marquee addition is, of course, the aforementioned 'impossification', a twist that wrenches the usually grounded theme park management genre a little out of reality to create a world where technology and physics are no longer limitations. As a die-hard management sim fan, though, I couldn't resist the recent opportunity to take Tropico developer Limbic Entertainment's latest project for a spin to see what, if anything, it might be able to bring to the familiar theme park genre. If it wasn't for Park Beyond's 'impossification' gimmick - with its ludicrous, physics-defying rides - you'd probably be hard pushed to tell it apart from any number of other theme park management games based on its trailers so far.

Park beyond game