Recent reviews by Lily

This isn't like the first with a new twist, no. I'm sorry, I REALLY wanted to love this but the graphics are worse and the gameplay is so, very, boring. The game is just waiting for resources to get moved.

A wonderful game full of beautiful graphics, storytelling, and adventure!

Better than the Civilization series. It's just more interesting... highly recommend, a very good hidden gem!!!!

I want to write this review comparing Parkitect to Planet Coaster. If you were like me, you were wondering if Parkitect could bring anything different to the table.

TLDR: Parkitect is better, below is why...

PROS vs Planet Coaster (PC)
- Employee management is more intelligent, more realistic, and more enjoyable. If a janitor is taking out the trash and walks by a dirty bathroom and vomit on his way to the trash disposal, the janitor will come back to clean up the bathroom and vomit after taking out the trash. They act more realistically in this way, like people with memories and responsibility. The employees seem to manage tasks themselves better as well, who is assigned to what job is usually most efficient and never needs intervention. There isn't shopkeeper management as well, which is nice, I believe PC was wrong in adding that unnecessary complexity/expense. Also, have no fear about your staff quitting for no reason whatsoever.
- Shop management is more challenging and therefore, enjoyable. Getting your shops profitable depends on several factors. In Parkitect, you need to have private employee paths to stock your shops privately, away from visitors. But you must have your shops near your visitors, because a thirsty visitor sometimes is too excited to seek out a shop: if there's a choice between an exciting ride or the shop, they might choose the ride and regret the decision later when their throat is bone dry. This causes you to plan a lot more in advance. Also, Cost of Goods come into play, you have to actually keep buying and stocking supplies in your shops. This means to be profitable, you have to watch your finances and be sure your prices are perfect.
- Visitor AI is NICE in Parkitect. At first I was bothered by visitors walking EVERYWHERE but I thought about it, in real life, I would too because you have no idea what's around the corner. In PC, visitors only walked somewhere if there was a reason, making a lot of your decorated areas with 0 visitors walking around. In Parkitect, if you build a path, they will walk it and it's nice to see your decorated areas get used and enjoyed. The visitors seem smarter as well, some will want to go to a shop they heard about at the other side of the park after visiting the next ride. The visitors seem more realistic, as if they have emotions, because sometimes they will make bad decisions because they are excited to ride the next ride and will forego that bathroom break a little too long. The visitors are less messy, they will hold onto their trash until they see a trash bin as long as they can. Also, NO TRAFFIC JAMS at all, so no need to build wide paths everywhere - seems the Parkitect visitors are just more friendly and cooperative to each other. Everything just seems to be better here.
- FPS: Parkitect has the same slowdown issues as PC with larger parks, but when you have a large running park somehow it's less annoying of a slowdown. All the people and rides run at their normal pace still, even if zoomed completely out. It's only when you move your camera about do you notice anything.
- Building, crafting, and decor: Parkitect has less building "stuff," and the system is different in control, but OMG everything fits together perfectly once you get the hang of it. There are a million ways to build something and in Parkitect, it ALWAYS looks good and seems to make sense. For some reason, it takes a lot less time to build too.
- Ride Mechanics: In Planet Coaster, you can build a slow moving car ride and charge a million dollars. Not in Parkitect, people will complain about the ride length, leave the park, and hate you. There are some other examples of this for various types of rides. This makes it harder to build rides that are "cash cows" and is more realistic...
- Updates and cost: Parkitect constantly updates and brings new things without having to buy a $10 DLC all the time. PC has cost me a lot of money in the long run and their DLCs are really bad.
- You don't feel as useless: In Parkitect, you can research, run marketing campaigns, just like in PC, BUT.... in Parkitect, I can help catch vandals. It feels good to kick them out.
- There are more calm, thrilling and water rides!
- There are more types of shops!
- There doesn't seem to be a NEED for hotels in Parkitect, your visitors will leave once they are done with their park, whatever that means to them. A visitor leaves once they have seen everything or if they are very upset. This means I feel more satisfied on my end, people enjoy every square inch of my park depending on the visitor's ride intensity preferences.
- There are very cool informative overlays in Parkitect, both in general for your whole park as well as for rides. You'll see what I mean.
- You can pin windows and organize your screen to suit your needs.
- It's harder to actually have a profitable park.
- I have an idea of what the perfect building/ride layout/setup might look like but in the amount of hours I have played, still have not nailed it down. This is a good thing, I hate figuring something out 100%. You must balance aesthetics with technical efficiency here and there's no formula that is a perfect balance here.
- THERE ARE MANY MORE CAMPAIGNS to play through and with replay value. They start off very easy but then get harder to accomplish. Very enjoyable!

CONS vs Planet Coaster (PC)
- There isn't a built-in ride simulator, to ride the ride, but there is a mod for this you can use and works perfectly with LESS lag than PC.
- Once you build something 3D, I haven't figured out how to view inside of the building to make corrections/edits/additions without having to delete walls temporarily.
- The intro graphics aren't as slick. (I am reaching here...)

Buy Parkitect.

Very cute game! I think the best part about this game are the graphics, they really surprised me during gameplay. The following pros and cons list is more for the developers, so you can bypass it. As an early access game, I do recommend playing and supporting! YES, buy it, play it, enjoy putting hats on dinos.

Pros
- Taking care of dinos.
- Lots of park decor options so you can make the experience unique.
- The graphics are very bright and cheerful, it's very relaxing to play.

Cons
- I feel like the expeditions are tedious and do not add to the game in any way. I would rather focus on more detailed park management or have a REAL expedition where the scientists travel rather than a click-fest that is taking me away from the park. I'm in the middle of building and managing, if I can't PAUSE the park then I don't want to leave the park. I KNOW the t-rex isn't going to eat anyone but I would rather stay there to be sure it doesn't happen, you know?
- I feel that buying gems to get eggs is an abstraction, an added click, that is useless. If a gem costs $500 and I need 1, why not just make the egg cost $500 and not 1 gem? It becomes a chore. If there needs to be leveling, in the way of being unlocked, then just make the specie unlock instead of the gem.
- I don't understand the visitor/employee mechanics. I had one janitor standing on a piece of trash for a few minutes until another janitor had to come by and clean it up... I had two picture-taking booths on display in the middle of a busy walkway for weeks and not one visitor used one... you can have food options and bins everywhere and people will complain about food options and leave trash everywhere... visitors walk right through decorations and buildings... WHY are visitors so UNHAPPY approaching the gate?!
- Toys should not unlock so late in the game if they are required for happy dinos.
- I feel like you can do everything right (which isn't hard to figure out, either, it's a bit too simple) and your income will be flat in time, visitors will be grumpy for no reason, and your dinos can't have perfect happiness. What's the reason?
- The science research building just made no sense to me. Why do I have to place scientists in place? Why can't they just go there themselves? Why does the building look like a disco? This one building was so cheesy compared to the other graphics in the game.
- Handling employees is near impossible, I can't click on them fast enough.
- Later in the game, your park might be very full of stuff, and it's very hard to click on things you do not expect to click on, for example, when a scientist finds something to dig up in the middle of your busy food court. No amount of rotating the camera or zooming makes it easier to click on the shovel or the dirt mound...
- Do the dinos come from space, time, space-time, or from the same planet? It seems like both, because your scientists find fossils to dig up both in the park and on expeditions. I don't get the story. I'm not sure I needed a story either. They're adorable, they can just "be." I was sold at Parkasaurus.
- I want more complex mechanics that make the habitats challenging while not punishing.
- It's a chore to find all the fossils to be able to hatch new specie of eggs. Once I have the minimum to keep interest, that's all I'm going to do, there's no reward in it for me to have diversity and it isn't fun to find all the fossils to do it.
- I had zero use for security employees or to tranquilize a dino.

I am really underwhelmed and disappointed every time I purchase a DLC. I am still expecting core changes. I still want more career challenges. This was the last DLC I will ever purchase...I want to support the team but this is ridiculous.

I love this game. Highly recommend if you are the least bit interested. I have no idea why, but hours just seem to fly by when you play this. Everything is simple, it's focused on good management, and the graphics are perfect.

For the devs, here are my requests from a person who has visited 10+ aquariums in several countries (also a designer, a developer, avid "park" strategy gamer, fish/ocean lover):
- I want to be able to build a GOOD LOOKING aquarium, not only efficient. This means: more people, 10x larger size, mood lighting, better decor (in and out of the aquariums), more things outside of aquariums (like video rooms, 3d theatres, a fake ship for kids to play on, learning displays, interesting walkways), and the ability to keep "ugly" stuff out (like soda machines, which have no place anywhere near a tank where it will blind my fish). Why not cafes that have counter service so that people have no use for food/drink vending machines every other square, because you can get a proper meal at a cafe that will keep them fuller longer? When I build larger aquariums that focus on one tank every x steps, they do worse than if I have an aquarium full to the brim of tanks, why? In the real world, these efficient aquariums would not do as well as those that are more elegantly designed or more FUN.
- I want more types of aquatic things: more fish of every type, bioluminescents of every type, petting pools, dolphins, etc.
- It would be interesting to have both aquatic and land types: frogs, penguins, seals, etc.
- I agree with some comments online, why is salinity not a factor?
- I need to be able to set a default paint. It's frustating otherwise.
- I want to set colors for everything: bins, tank structure, staff...
- I'd like the option of changing the size of UI elements, they take up way too much space at larger resolutions (2560 here). Ex: if you have more than 1 autofeeder on screen, the drop-down menu for the second autofeeder you cannot see all the food options or scroll in it. Ex: it's almost impossible to drag and drop from the messages into your aquarium with how large the message window is.
- Sorting would be nice in the UI.
- Gift idea: 1x1 or 1x2 space of miniture tanks you see at pet stores so people can buy small fish to take home with them. Would make the gift shop area really adorable <3
- More gifts, seating, trash bins, whatever, I want more stuff to play with.
- The sandbox, let's talk about that. I beat the game. When I play the sandbox, not all elements are unlocked. Where is the megatank, whale shark, the octopus from scenario 9, etc? The sandbox should have the option of infinite money and ALL options unlocked. Otherwise, it isn't a sandbox.

K THX =)

I got this game free in a Steam special. A lot of cons for me:
- There's no storyline.
- The animation moves too slow.
- There's a LOT of clicking involved. Even getting hints requires you to click bugs?
- The hints are not useful. We already know what to do but we need help doing it or finding something.
- Everything feels tedious... there's no awe in exploring, no rewards.
- I quit at the globe with the 3 colors.

This is NOT paper mario or SoTN as an RPG. You gather items, you get rewarded for finding things, but you do not gain experience or customize your character based on how many things you kill. You are rewarded for exploring. I wanted to make that clear as when I purchased based on the reviews it seemed like a normal RPG sidescroller. That having been said, I LOVE THIS GAME. It's adorable. I wish it was longer. Highly recommend playing this one!

Got it on sale and didn't finish it. Felt tedious after a few chapters and impossible to complete without using hints. Just wasn't very fun... graphics, story, and audio are terrific though.