I’m particularly nonplussed by the bobbleheaded characters, which makes your park look like it’s populated by Funko Pops, and surely nobody wants that. It’s not ugly by any means, but stylistically it’s also not very distinctive.

More generally, Parkitect’s presentation is a little staid. It’s all very counter-intuitive, and after dragging and pulling out rides in Planet Coaster, using Parkitect’s system feels positively Neolithic. If you try to click on the coaster again, the game will immediately try to place a ride entrance. But actually building the coaster requires you to use the buttons on the coaster menu. To start building a coaster, you place a station like any other object.

Probably the weakest part of the UI, however, is the coaster builder itself. Another annoying issue is that menus for rides always appear in the centre of the screen rather than off to one side, which means you’re obscured from viewing the ride that you want to edit. Worse, demolition is a two-step process, with you first having to highlight the object for demolition, and then click a tiny tick in the bottom of the screen. For starters, there’s no Undo button, so any mistakenly placed objects have to be manually demolished. Most prominent it the UI, which aside from being greyer than Britain in December, is also oddly designed.

Nonetheless, Parkitect does exhibit a few issues. You can’t fault Parkitect for its generosity, nor for its cleanly designed simulation. There are also dozens of different rides to unlock, and the coaster selection is particularly impressive, ranging from simple junior coasters to log-flumes, flying coasters, and even a bobsled run. An early example sees you repurposing a disused airfield, forcing you to build your park on a long but narrow strip of land. Alongside the sandbox mode, the campaign includes 26 different parks to build, each of which has its own unique set of challenges.

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