Thrillville

Ever wanted to make your own amusement park? Yeah, neither have we. One only has to imagine all of the red tape, legalese, investment concerns, zoning issues, contract disputes, liability claims, piles of vomit everywhere... you might be dead before you get around to designing your first

Thursday 2 November 2006 Back in the day, everything from murdering naked innocents (Rampage) to initiating incestuous affairs (Kissin' Kousins) was par for the course for young gamers and no one batted an eyelid. Alas, times have changed. These days children must feel like chastised tabloid targets just for seeking to do something as comparatively pedestrian as repeatedly driving over a virtual prostitute or policeman. The fact that many children hanker after adult-oriented games goes some

There's really only one problem with monster-selling games like Rollercoaster Tycoon and Theme Park: they're no fun. Somehow, these micro-management games found a way to strip all the amusement out of amusement parks. Can Thrillville change it all? The simpler setup feels like a good start: You're the young relative of a theme park tycoon and he's thrilled that you're coming on board to help him run the place (and stop Globo-Joy from taking it over). You've got carte blanche to improve

Theme-park simulators are nothing new, but Thrillville might be the first to mix roller-coaster building with third-person exploration, interactive conversations, first-person shooting and nearly every other conceivable gameplay style to date. Casting players as a kid who inherits a chain of crappy theme parks from a rich uncle, Thrillville tasks you with cleaning up your new playgrounds and building badass attractions to draw in guests. So, OK, that part is old hat. But once the guests are