The uninitiated might glance at Thrillville, note its theme park setting, wacky rides, and managerial elements and simply dismiss it as a straightforward sim game built from the off-cut scraps of Bullfrog’s classic Theme Park series. But doing so is to miss the point of this altogether more innovative and interesting videogame. In reality, this is a game a lot less about managing the day to day tedium and tribulations of an amusement park and an awful lot more about designing some awesome rides to scare its visitors with and some excellent minigames to boot.

At its core this is a fantasy rollercoaster building game, its gameplay split into three distinct areas: riding rollercoasters, building rides and stalls and playing the minigames that represent those rides and stalls. There are missions to take up as park manager which give you specific tasks to undertake to make the park better. these are split into five categories: build, games, guests, upkeep and manage and carrying out missions in each category boosts your park’s popularity. You earn trophies in these missions and this strand of the game helps give purpose and direction to the overarching storyline, such as it is.

In terms of the rollercoasters you start out with some simple off-the-shelf style designs that you can select and add to your park right from the off. You’re then able to mod your ride into something altogether different by selecting the customisation option. Loop-the-loops, corkscrews, drops, gaps in the track and giant flaming hoops are all elements that can be dropped into your designs. The menu system for handling all of this is intuitive and quick to use, and makes the core of the game a success.

Of course there are managerial elements to the game as you are, after all, charged with making a successful and enticing theme park for your visitors. But, rather than having to pore over pages of dry graphs and statistics, in Thrillville you simply walk up to your customers to get an idea of what their needs and wants are.

Not got enough toilets to satisfy demand next to the corkscrew rollercoaster? Your customers will be only too quick to let you know, and this different way of presenting the information needed to make the necessary changes to improve your park is a welcome change. Everything about your park affects your guests’ opinions and enjoyment and so talking to them regularly is important. It’s even possible to flirt with members of the opposite sex and, if you manage to woo them enough, you might even earn a Love Interest status.

In addition to this Thrillville brings back its wide range of minigames that first debuted in the original game. Upping the number of minigames to over 50, these add a huge extra dimension and variety to the package and can even be enjoyed in multiplay outside of the main flow of the game. The content of the games is simple and straightforward but some of them are truly compelling, adding yet another option for Wii owners looking for a party play package.

Thrillville is a varied and enjoyable game that tries its hand at many different things and manages to maintain a good level of competence throughout. It lacks the detail of a sim game proper and for stat fans it will almost certainly be too flimsy. But for gamers in search of a more light-hearted approach to managing a theme park, with some generous minigames thrown in for good measure, this is an excellent package that delivers.

3 out of 5