Just half a year or so after we announced, we suddenly had two competitors from well-known companies. We all grew up with the Theme Park and Rollercoaster Tycoon games and there hasn’t been a game like these that we thoroughly enjoyed for 10 years or so,” explains Mayer. It was funded via Kickstarter (where it raised 35,000) and is being built by just three people. Parkitect started as a reaction to the lack of decent rollercoaster tycoon games. It’s really cool to see that there’s been more interest in the genre recently, and especially to see games like this from somewhat smaller teams, like Cities: Skylines and Prison Architect.” Sebastian Mayer, the programmer of the game Parkitect, adds: It’s been relatively silent in the last few years – not just in the theme park management genre, but in the simulation genre in general. We like coaster games, and if people are making more then it suggests the genre is back, which makes us very happy.” From our point-of-view, it is unbelievably gratifying and exciting that this genre is back. You’ve got Cities Skylines, Prison Architect, Parkitect, even Rollercoaster Tycoon World, it shows there is a market for them. The tycoon simulation genre is back,” declares Frontier’s creative director Jonny Watts, which is working on the upcoming Planet Coaster. In fact, there are three theme park-style titles on the release slate for 2016, and they’ve all been excited by Skylines’ success. Not only did it prove that the perceived dead simulation strategy genre was anything but, it also highlighted to the world’s publishers that you shouldn’t talk down to your customers.ġ2 months on and another sim strategy sub-genre is making a return: the rollercoaster tycoon game. 2m people bought it.Ĭities: Skylines was an eye-opener. This team had no interest in broader markets, so it made a full, hardcore city simulation game.
Then in 2015, a tiny development studio called Colossal Order made Cities: Skylines – a full-scale rival to SimCity.