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Mini-Review
What a disappointment this one was. I haven't gotten into the "_____ Simulator" games (they look suspiciously like a new version of the off-brand budget "_____ Tycoon" games of the mid-2000s), yet I had high hopes for it regardless. After all, I liked the idea of waterparks. There was whole "early 2000s games" that had crystal clear beaches like Final Fantasy X, Super Mario Sunshine, and a few others, and maybe even if I couldn't rebuild the waterparks of my youth there would be something there, either visually impressive water effects or cute female lifeguards or the perverse thrill of mass chaos as people try to not die in the wave pool.

Waterpark Simulator crushed those dreams. When I first opened the game, and even in the tutorial, there was a tacky Christmas overlay, which is dumb as most waterparks (except indoor ones) are closed for the winter anyway. Luckily I could turn off the Christmas decorations, but I think they still had the music up. Whatever.

I started the main campaign that has you, the player, take over an abandoned waterpark in the city. Well, I prefer my waterparks to be in the suburbs, but okay, sure. Pick up trash, okay, sure. The first thing you can place in your park is a "Rusty Pool" with a "Rusty Diving Board" with it. I mean, if you're going to have a rusted-old waterpark, the idea is you not put in crummy things to replace it.

Once I put my underwhelming pool in and whatever inane task the game asked me to do (such as open and create tickets, basically some sort of time-management minigame, I took a look at the actual pool. For a game based around water, it only looks nice before people jump in, then it looks more like molten metal and appears glitchy. Of course, you couldn't admire your handiwork, you had to use a broom to sweep up puddles so people didn't slip. Meanwhile your character would slip constantly due to bad hit detection.

Things got more complicated as it asked me to print out fliers and give them to other people in the city area (a very limited area) as well as setting up a hot dog stand but all the hot dogs had to be purchased from the store across the street(?!), meanwhile all the while people were slipping on water spills, ambulances were called, getting fined for said ambulance calls, guests waiting for tickets, and so on. This wasn't Waterpark Simulator, this was torture.

It's a real shame, too, because the last time I remember something like this was the "Soaked!" expansion pack of RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 from 2005. The developer of RCT3 was Frontier Developments, and Planet Coaster 2 has waterpark capabilities, in fact, they look better than Waterpark Simulator. However, PC2 has a bunch of other issues, and I did not like Planet Coaster.

When I was writing this review, I found that the game's developer, CayPlay Studios, was founded by a YouTuber and not an overseas operation that I previously believed...though with the game's current state and quirks it doesn't make much of a difference at this point.

Conclusion

I made the above for a failed meme post but it does explain my feelings on the game. Sources include a screenshot of RollerCoaster Tycoon 3, something I whipped in Death Generator, a shot of Action Park's infamous Cannonball Loop, and a map of (what is now known as) Hurricane Harbor Splashtown, which I've talked about in my "City pages" specifically the North Freeway page of Carbon-izer. It's an outdated page but worth checking out.

FINAL RATING:   

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