To be clear, I am writing this for Challange mode on Hard.

Right now I will only be covering the opening, but with enough support and cups of coffee I may continue the guide.

We will cut every corner.
We won't waste time on scenic garbage.
And they will still beg us to take their money.

Lets get started.

Load into your park and press 'p' to pause the game and also set the simulation speed up to max. I'll wait here.



First things first, use the bottom right to set the time of day to 10:00am and lock it. The guests don't care what time it is so neither will we. All we want is the cash.

Next up, under Rides build "Wild Blue". This is the cornerstone of our new empire. Now, placing the ride is absolutly critical. We don't want to pay for any more paths then we have to and guests don't like long queues. So there is no reason to let queues get too long.

With that said, placing the entrance and exit to the ride to minimize guest walking time from the enterence to the ride, then from the ride to the exit to maximize profits. The faster we fill those seats, the faster more people will give us money.

After placing the ride, instantly crank the ticket price of the ride to 11 and open it. Then unpause the game and watch your park flood with guests.

See whats wrong with this picture? I call it a conflict of interest. I want guest's money and the guests expect some sort of value for that money. And by value, I mean make the red things green. Because we like green; green is money, green is good.

Here's how I did it:


See it? Neither do I. And thats the trick. Remember that your guests are money carrying idiots. Which are the two most imporantant facts that you must never forget.

Here's the magic:


Yeah thats right; just build a bunch of random crap, select it all (multiselect, bottom right of screen), and bury it so you don't waste precious land on "biodomes", "legos", "mario things", "elf crap", "resturants" and other junk. Time is money, don't waste it trying to do things that don't matter. Those dumb guests don't care, so neither should you.

Oh, and that crap only costed 392.50, can be placed in between multiple rides, blueprinted and repeated, and the guests still eat it up even though they can't see anything.

The best part? Oh there's always a better part. This low low cost of 392.50 was already covered by our one ride that made 452.75 in the time it took to make it.

Now you may be thinking, well how sustainable is this?

It isn't. Get that into your head. Crap breaks and we don't have anyone to fix it.

But that's okay, what would that mechanic be doing anyway? Just stopping the ride every 30 minutes to move some stuff around and say that it's still okay to run.

If it isn't smoking, don't fix it. And that means only have mechanics around when you need them.

When our ride does catch on fire, simply drop one down, cut his salary all the way down to ZERO, let him fix it, then fire him. It's okay, don't feel bad; if he is good at being a mechanic, then he'll find a new job just fine.

But we don't care about feelings, because feelings don't sell.

What we didn't do is just as important as what we just did.

Notice that we didn't place any food or drink stands, didn't build a bathroom, NOTHING.

This is by design. If a guest is hungry, then go ahead, leave. See if I care, I already got their money.

Food, drinks, and similar are for sustainment. Pulling a profit from a food court with limiting investment funds is HARD if not impossible when you consider the costs vs the gains.

Lets take an example. If we wanted a drink stand that would cost...

• 200 - Cosmic Cow Milkshakes Stand
  
• 200 - Standard Restroom Block (guests will now need a bathroom)
  
• 5 - Park bin (so you don't have litter every where)

Which takes us up to 405 upfront. But wait! It gets worse. We now need to pay a janitor, pay the food vendor, pay building upkeep costs on both the milkshake stand and the bathrooms!

• 150 (per month) - Vendor
  
• 200 (per month) - Milkshakes Stand
  
• 100 (per month) - Bathrooms
  
• 120 (per month) - Janitor

This comes to 570 per month! This is more than the upfront cost and we are going to be paying it every month!

This isn't to say that all food courts and vendors are bad, but there are a lot of hidden costs that you must be conscious about.

And in the early stages of the game (where sustainment isn't very important), these hidden costs may cause a park to fail.

This was a quick write up to see how it does in the wild. Always open for comments and suggestions.

This setup should get you on your way to "beating" challange mode on hard.

Best of luck,
reth