So, you've been given the job of making the latest and greatest theme-park game. The objective: create an authentic theme-park experience in a box. Where do you start?
Jonny Watts, Senior Producer at Frontier Developments
Well, a good place might be to go to a few real theme parks and see how "the competition" does it! We've made quite a few games set in theme parks over the last few years now and although it really helps that we're nuts about roller coasters and theme parks in general, there's nothing quite like a regular refresher course.
When we first got our development team together, one of the first things we did was to go on a trip to Blackpool, one of the UK's top theme parks. As well as making for a great "getting to know you" experience for those who were new to the team, we of course made sure that everyone rode all the rides, from the gentlest to the most extreme, just so they experienced the excitement that we are delivering to the player.
Theme parks are also great places to study the way the set decoration is used, the clever relationships between one area and another and the path layout. These are all directly relevant to developing a game like Thrillville, as we need to create a similar type of illusion for our players as, say, Disney does with their parks for their guests.
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