Rollercoaster Tycoon Adventures Deluxe Switch Review

It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of Tycoon games, and I love revisiting “Let’s Build a Zoo” from time to time as one of my go-to games, so when I saw Rollercoaster Tycoon Deluxe on the shelves at my local EB Games, I thought why give it a go to break up some of the big releases this year. Having thoroughly enjoyed Planet Coaster on my Series X, it seemed like a no-brainer. What’s RollerCoaster Tycoon Adventures Deluxe Like? Check that you’re tall enough to jump on this rollercoaster ride of a game, and let’s dive in.

Rollercoaster Tycoon Adventures is all about creating an amazing theme park by balancing guests’ needs with fun, food, and hygiene. This iteration of the game doesn’t quite have the same depths as Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 (which is also on the Switch) and offers a more casual experience. This makes it accessible to a younger audience, and since this version of the game is actually based on the mobile version of the game, some elements may not be as complex as one would hope when managing a theme park.

The core gameplay loop sees you building attractions to increase revenue, use that revenue to research new attractions, rinse, and repeat. I actually quite enjoyed the gameplay despite it being more basic than its predecessors, but the myriad of bugs and performance issues eventually made me put down the game in absolute frustration… Making a terrible first impression, the tutorial hinders a lot of the fun by popping up a giant text box in the middle of the screen, blocking your view of what you have to do. I had to skip some of the objectives simply to move forward. Once the tutorial was complete, I spent a few good minutes figuring out how to exit to the title screen, which isn’t in the actual options menu, but rather a small text box in the bottom right-hand corner when you open the menu. It’s clunky UI decisions like this that you will be fighting with a lot of the time in your playthrough of the game.

While playing for the first 30 minutes or so, you will be given choices such as finding new insurance providers or compensating an injured child. These decisions only serve to punish the player, as choosing the moral high ground seems to do nothing but punish the player with less traffic and ticket sales. Even some of the nonsensical choices like “choose red or blue tablecloths for a fundraiser” result in a negative player reward of donating 30% of your income to the charity. This makes the first stages of your park an unnecessary and frustrating challenge through no fault of your own. It almost feels like a leftover mechanic to drain your funds so you would buy more cash via microtransactions, but thankfully, they aren’t in the Switch version of the game.

The interface is very clunky, and I found myself selecting a ride, only for a different one to be selected because, for some bizarre reason, it randomly moves your selection to the start of the row again. Building Rollercoasters is also an exercise in frustration, being stuck on a glitch because the game can’t figure out the paths of the track, only to have to delete and start again, to get caught on the same bug. Thankfully, you can buy pre-packaged layouts that avoid this pain. This is a shame because I found myself enjoying creating themed sections of the park, as well as expanding my territory and planning out new themed attraction areas. You can research different decoration themes and change terrain to suit, much like my Wild West section of the park. It’s also strange that you can’t move or build the game while time is paused.

Graphically, the game looks decent with nice colours and details on rides. There are some visual glitches like staff walking on the spot or rollercoasters not following tracks. There are a lot of immersion-breaking bugs, with the worst offender being the performance that gradually gets worse the longer you play. The point that made me put the Switch down was trying to decorate the 2nd expanded section of my park (and mind you the other sections weren’t full) and with every decoration I placed, there was a pause of a few seconds while the game auto populates lights and benches, and then a few more seconds of terrible framerates before returning to normal. This completely destroys enthusiasm for the game, especially when placing around 20 or so decorations to polish off a section.

Value-wise, this is simply a repackaged version of the same game that was released in 2018, with extra attractions, 80 to be precise. The original version of the game was already overpriced at best, and unfortunately, it’s a hard sell at $70 AUD when you can buy a much more in-depth Tycoon game with Rollercoaster Tycoon 3, or even a $20 Kairosoft game. The only benefit of this version of the game is that it may be more accessible for the little ones.

For my vision-impaired gamers, there are no accessibility options, and the scale and colours of the game, especially during the night, make things hard to differentiate. You are able to zoom in and out, however, which may make things easier.

All in all, Rollercoaster Tycoon Adventures deluxe feels like a haphazard attempt at cashing in on unsuspecting gamers for the holiday season. Aside from the extra rides, there are no improvements (performance or quality of life) to the game that was originally released in 2018, and it’s very hard to justify the price point with so many AAA heavy hitters out in the same release window. For those chasing a park building sim, there are plenty of other options that offer more for less. I really wanted to enjoy this one, but unfortunately the game goes out of it’s way with nonsense morality choices and frustrating design to make sure I didn’t.