Thrillville - The coolest games and most nausea-inducing rides on the planet

The Menu

Anytime you please, you can hit the Select or Back button to access the five-point menu. From these, you can get pretty much anything done at all.

First up is the Missions Menu that lists your missions for the current park, as well as what medal (if any) you have earned with it. You can get more detail with any mission, and for most missions, pressing A warps your character to wherever he needs to be to deal with it. Which saves you time.

The second menu is the manage menu. This is further broken down to seven sections.

Overview

gives you an idea of your general park status, including your average guests' needs, your park value, and your overall park reliability. you want to keep tabs on this on certain missions.

Finance

shows you a breakdown of where your money comes from and goes to every month. You can also take out and repay loans from this screen.

Demographics

presents a breakdown of the guests in your park. To maximize income, you want to use this graph and adjust your prices accordingly. For example, if your park is mostly populated by children, you will want to keep prices a little lower than normal as they cannot afford much.

Marketing

lets you spend some cash to draw a large number of people. The age group of the people you draw depends on the publication in which you market, and this screen also shows you how all that will be broken down.

Research

allows you to set your research budget, in increments of $100/month. You can also preview what attractions will be researched as time goes on. Once they are all researched, your research budget will clear itself.

Staff

where you head to view your current staff members, hire new ones, and fire or train those you have got.

Graphs

View graphs of your profits, and your trend for attracting guests. Neat to see, but not really that useful.

In practice, you only need to worry about the Research and Staff menus, although others will come into play as you hit certain, more complex missions.

The third menu of the hub is the Build Menu, where you order the construction of any rides, games, stalls, or coasters. For the most of the options, you simply choose a category, then the specific attraction you want to build, and its location. The building tutorial (which you are forced to play) will show you the details of that. Note that you can have any given ride or game only once in your park (mini-golf is the only exception). You can place as many stalls as you want, although every spot dedicated to a stall is one that you do not get to place a ride on.

The fourth menu is the Inventory Menu, where you can see everything you have built in the park. From here, you can instantly set the price or sell any game, ride, or stall. Plus, you can play or ride anything you have built from here too, without having to run all over the park to get there. you will also see each area's power limit from this menu. To use a balloon stall or hat stall, you will still need to visit the attraction in person; everything else you can do from this menu.

The final menu is not a menu, but a rather a map of the current park. Every park is divided into three areas, as you can see from your map. that is a lot of ground to cover, but you can also instantly warp to any built attraction. With the Inventory Menu, you probably will not have to warp too often with the map, unless you need to see exactly where things are laid out.

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Being Social

Although the majority of the game places you above the customers (in a sense), things get far more personal with this game than any other theme park simulator. Your character, whom you choose before the story gets underway, is trolling along the park's paths just like everyone else.You can talk to literally anyone you want to, provided they are not in line for anything. When talking, anyone they are with stand nearby, which is important.

Several missions require you to interact with the guests, but there is a better reason to do so than just that. If you become social with enough guests, or romance a few, the park becomes a happier. Your friends are more inclined to buy more. Unlike The Sims, relationships never decay, so once you max out someone's friendship, you can wash your hands of them forever and still carry all their benefits.

If a specific guest must be interacted with to fulfill a mission, you can warp to them immediately from the Missions Menu. Otherwise, you can start up a conversation with anyone by running up to them and hitting the appropriate button. Their entire group will look at you, and you can select any of them specifically to get to gabbing.

After the introduction, conversing is done entirely through what is essentially a dialogue tree. At the top of the screen is a series of word bubbles, and you can select a category to discuss. You can draw park opinions from anyone, as well as randomly chat with anyone. You can also "matchmake." Challenge them to a game you built; or flirt with them provided you are allowed to.

Like with the categories, you can select an option from the top; each word balloon has a picture in it representing the subject. The target reacts either positively or negatively. Positive reactions lead to a boost on the relationship meter (shown at the bottom of the screen), whilst negative reactions lower it.

The trick though is to pick subjects the target is interested in. For 99% of your conversations, you have no idea what the target is interested in at first. The only way to find out is to pick an option and hope you are right, then learn from the result. For example, if you select an option with an ice cream cone, then the subject is food. If the target gets a boost, then generally they like ANY food topic. Just pick another food topic, and the boost should be higher.

Some universal subjects seem to stick. Girls seem to love any talk about dolphins and guys seem to like soccer, even if they do not otherwise like the animal or sports topics, respectively. Again, you need to deal with experimentation for the general talk.

Being social does not just net you missions. In addition to the happiness boost mentioned, friends give you more-detailed information when you ask them about the park. They mention lack of facilities, or suggest what rides to build. it is always up to you, of course, if you want to follow their advice or not.

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Hired Help

Through the staff screen of the Manage Menu, you can hire entertainers for crowd control (boosting the guests' happiness), mechanics to repair and maintain rides, and groundskeepers to do vomit patrol. it is a stinky job, someone's gotta do it, and it sure as heck ain't gonna be you.

When hired, employees have zero training. This means they do their jobs, just not very well. This translates into three things, from our experience: speed of performing their job, intensity of doing their job, and reaction time to an emergency. For example, a mechanic with zero training will take awhile to respond to a broken ride, take way too long to fix it, and when he does fix it, it is more like a duct-tape-and-WD40 job (meaning the reliability rating after the fix is not very good).

Luckily, training them up is a snap, even if it does mean you will have to do the work yourself. Select someone to train from the staff menu, and you will temporarily take control of them. Entertainers and groundskeepers can start their training games anywhere, but mechanics have to find a ride to maintain or repair.

Once the game starts, you have a limited time to do something, as explained in the mini-games section. If you get a perfect score, your employee's training level will top off. If not, it takes a significant boost. You can hit a button to restart the mini-game, and play it a second time, which adds to the training. You probably never have to train the same employee more than twice to top off their meter.

If you do not want to take such a hands-on approach, note that their training level automatically increases the longer they are in the park. However, it will take a long time (measured in hours rather than minutes) for an employee to top off at 100 training if you did nothing to help. Spend the 90 seconds to train 'em: it pays off.

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Making Money

The financial aspect of Thrillville is pretty thin and easy to get a hang of. The only expenses you have are stocking your stalls and paying your employees, both of which happen automatically. Meanwhile, you make money doing everything else, from having guests buy your tickets and souvenirs, to scoring high in games yourself.

You make so much money in the game that it is all a moot point. If you ever find yourself running out (which should never happen, assuming you follow our guide), all you need to do is sit back and wait. The money come, and then you can go on to building.

You can, of course, take out loans through the Finance portion of the Manage Menu. Loans come out in $1000 increments, and carry interest. This could help you out if you need to build something right now and are a bit short, although you have to repay it.

The general idea here is that you have to spend money to make money, as the saying goes. Just build every ride you can, make an exciting coaster, fill up any empty spots with stalls, and the money comes rolling in.

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Building Coasters

Coasters and race tracks are your big-ticket items. You could actually gain plenty of profits without them, and you cannot pass missions if you only have them. However, considering you can ride them yourself in Thrillville, it pays to make a good one.

The best place to practice building coasters in the Blueprint mode, accessed from the main menu. Here, you build a coaster or race track in a large desert area, free from guests and other rides. In Story Mode, because you are working with a pre-determined park, it can be difficult to make a good coaster or track and leave room for other things. If you occupy too much of the "Build Zones" with track, you will just eat up room that could be going to carnival rides, games, or stalls.

Ideally, you have no coaster at all when you are setting up your park initially. Check your missions, then build your carnival rides and games that you need to complete those missions. You can then build your new coaster and be able to see what amount of land you actually have available.

When you build your tracks, note that you have height limits. Tracks cannot be too low to the ground (and in the guests' way), nor can it be too high. The game tells you if you hit any limits. Just back up if you do and look for an alternate idea.

Guests in Thrillville do not seem too bothered by repetition. You could have a rollercoaster with just a few drops, or one that has a pattern of drop-loop-up, drop-loop-up. The only thing that seems to matter is whether you have a decent number of both drops and thrill track pieces. The exact type of thrill track piece does not seem to matter either.

Unlike the RollerCoaster Tycoon series, it is impossible to get a car stuck. For example, if the train is coming to a loop, and it does not have enough speed to get through the loop, magical forces (in the form of an omnipresent pull chain) will carry it through. No corpses from malfunctioning rides.

It does not take much effort to create something that will be ridden. The higher the thrill rating (which goes up based on speed, number of drops, and thrill track pieces), the more guests are willing to pay to ride it. Generally, high thrills also mean high nausea, but if you have plenty of groundskeepers and bathrooms, you never have a problem.

Play around with the Blueprint mode for awhile and find something you like. Different types of coasters contain different types of thrill track, so what is available for stand up coasters may not be in wooden coasters.

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Auto Sprint

A top down racer, Auto Sprint features no distractions like powerups, weapons, speed zones, or insane shortcuts. Some would argue that means no fun, but get three other guys who know what they are doing, and this little racer keeps them occupied for awhile.

Six tracks exist in Auto Sprint, and you can play them with four players total (human and AI), or you can play Battle Mode, which is 1-on-1. A few tracks do have shortcuts, and they are guarded with disappearing barriers. For example, you need to dart across an electric barrier; mis-time your acceleration, and your car will explode as it hits the electricity.

The only problem with Auto Sprint is that it takes a bit of time to get a feel for your car. They handle like they are on ice, and turn faster than they accelerate, so you will have to be very light on the stick to get around turns.

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Bumper Cars

These bumper cars act like real bumper cars: you cannot blow each other up or anything. This game is fairly bland, as all you do is drive around and tap other cars. There is a button to put more bodyweight into your bump (called a Shunt), giving you more points on impact, but that is it.

You only score points if the front of your car hits someone else; a head-on collision nets you both points. At the end of the time limit, whoever has the most points wins the match.

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Entertainer and Entertainer Turbo

The training game for the Entertainer, this is Thrillville's attempt at a Dance Dance Revolution clone; by and large, it is a good one. A circle in the center of the screen holds your cursor, and button marks fly from all eight directions. Point your cursor in the direction of the mark, and when it lines up with the circle, hit the indicated button.

The system is fairly lenient: no matter what direction you are pointed in, the game counts it if the cursor is in a zone adjacent to the mark. For example, if the mark is coming from the top, you can be pointing at the top-left or top-right zone and still score, provided you timed the tap right. Of course, you have more points for greater accuracy.

In the top-left corner of the entire screen is a yellow bar (the "Success" bar) that is constantly going down. Every time you correctly tap, that bar fills a bit. If it should ever run out, your dance gets terminated, and your friends mock you. It should be quite easy to keep that nice and high unless you are playing the Turbo version for the very first time.

The Turbo version unlocks after you get a gold medal on all 108 missions in Story Mode. If you think you are good, try out Turbo: the button taps are insane, and you are testing your thumbs and eyes on it.

On the easier difficulty of the standard version, if you are having trouble with timing, you can get away with pointing at the approaching button and just mashing it like mad. Such a trick does not work when they start coming rapidly, however, and the tactic does not lead to very high scores either. Still, it may save you if you are struggling on the training in the story mode.

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Event Horizon

You have a spaceship with nifty weapons, they have a ton of other spaceships that come at you constantly. What is a pilot to do but blow up everything you see?

Four ships are at your disposal. Each has a specific gimmick to its weaponry. Your ship can change weapons on the fly, from a forward shot to twin shots that go up and down, with a press of the R1 button. No matter which fire mode you are in, the game is designed for you to hold down X, rather than tap it.

Destorying enemies will leave little things that look like colored grains of rice; touching these charges up your gun meter. As this meter climbs, your shot becomes more powerful and can even change form. However, you can also burn through your gun meter with a powerful beam by holding L1 and pressing X. This shot goes through every enemy and basically cause general havoc for your benefit.

The first ship, Solar Dominion, has rapid-fire shots. Its twin shots also come out in bursts, but not as many. As it levels up, its gun actually becomes slower. However, its shots explode on impact, and any enemy getting within that plume of fire is cooked.

The second ship, Storm Conductor, fires lightning from its front cannon. If you switch to the twin shots, you can constantly hold down the fire button to send a spew of electricity out of the front. Then, as you get near an enemy (even if it is behind you), the beam will seek out a target and hit it automatically. This ship is great, but it has very little range, so it is a bit dangerous.

The third ship, Emerald Spirit, fires a constant beam of green laser across the whole screen, which means it is extremely difficult to miss a target. However, it is not as powerful as the other ships, so you have to keep the laser on stronger enemies for several seconds to destroy them. Its twin shots are actually more powerful than the main laser, and can bounce off walls at higher levels. When you are in a tight area, that is the way to go. The final level of the twin laser stops bouncing, but it hits literally the entire screen as it sweeps from the ship.

The final ship, Midnight Eclipse, has mixed weaponry. No matter what level you are at, its rounds penetrate targets, so shots are not stopped on a hit. (This means a single shot could wipe out a whole row of enemies.) At the highest gun level, the twin shots seek out targets like the Storm Conductor ship, although it has the range of the whole screen. However, it is tough to level this one up quickly, and all its shots are fairly weak starting with about the middle of the second level. Definitely an expert ship.

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Flirting

This is the only game on this list that is not selectable in Party Mode. The flirting mini-game only opens up when you are flirting with a guest (whether personally or because you are possessing the flirter). You control cupid, who spins in a circle and fires arrows at targets.

The targets are hearts, and each is of three colors, with one of several pictures on them indicating subjects. Above the head of the guest you are trying to flirt with are other hearts. Your goal is to shoot a target that matches the color or subject of what your guest is thinking. For example, if a green heart with a phone appears over the head of your guest, you are to shoot a green heart OR a heart with a phone. Doing so earns one love point. If you manage to shoot an identical heart (a green one with a phone in this case), you earn two love points. When you hit 10 love points, you are done.

All love points go into the relationship meter, so scoring well tops it off.

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Groundskeeper

The groundskeeper training game is the most annoying of the three employees' games. it is essentially a third-person shooter, where you run around and try to clean up puke or suck in litter. Your triggers on your controller correspond to which mode you want to fire: hold down the left side for water to wash up the nasty orange splats, and hold down the right side to vacuum up paper and cups.

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Luftwaffe 109 and Luftwaffe 109 Turbo

Luftwaffe 109 sends you back to World War II. Or perhaps more accurately, it sends you back to 1942. You control a plane in a vertical scroller, and it is just you against hundreds of enemies and crazy bosses.

There are four planes, but they do not have the variety of the planes in Event Horizon. The first plane, the Firefly, has wide shots to cover more ground. The second, Spider Crab, goes for power rather than size. Whistling Death, the third plane, is basically the opposite of the first: rather than the shots emanating from a single point and spreading out, the shots start out spread, then converge. The final plane, Storm Cloud, basically does a little of everything, which is great because when fully upgraded, it fires a spray of shots with the middle shot being very powerful.

Rather than one-hit kills, your planes can take several rounds before exploding. Also, you have got a smart bomb that hits everything near you, sending little planes to their graves and doing massive damage to everything else. You can only hold three bombs at once, and they are indicated under your score.

The enemies produce powerups that chance your shot power and range, as well as medals that you can pick up for points only. You can also restore your bombs if the right powerup comes along as well.

Luftwaffe 109 is okay, but its standard version is quite a bit easier than Event Horizon. The Turbo edition is for expert players, when everything moves around quite a bit faster.

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Mechanic

In this employee training game, you basically have to get from point A to point B with a variety of pieces. These are wires, I suppose, joining two components of a computer circuit. The faster you place the pieces, the better the score (and training boost).

For the first couple parks, the pieces come to you in order. Soon though, they do not, and you have to draw the path in your mind before actually placing the pieces down. If you make a mistake, a red stop sign appears and prevent you from placing any more pieces. Press Triangle to pull up the previous piece, and try again.

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Mini-Golf and Mini-Golf Timed

Mini-Golf is fairly fun. Change the camera angle with the left stick (up or down), set your direction with the left stick as well (left or right), then press A to get your power meter going up. Press the button again to lock it, and your alter-ego will make his putt.

The ball slows down very fast after being hit, so you have to practice a bit to get used to the power meter. Once you do, you have this game mastered in no time.

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Racing

There are several kart-like racers in different themes. They basically all operate the same way: drive like crazy. No powerups or other distractions here, and you cannot fall off the track no matter how much you try. You can design your own course to race on as well.

Although you have a brake, ignore it. There is a handbrake which is useful for powersliding, but otherwise, just slam the accelerator and go. You have three modes: a race against three others, a race against one other, or a time trial. Vehicle themes include the Anti-Grav Racer (like a miniature spaceship), Dune Buggies, Formula cars, Go Karts, and Monster Trucks. Despite the different names and appearances, all varieties drive the exact same way.

Your opponents seem to have a bit of catch-up AI in their favor. That is, if you are in first, they tend to speed up a hair to keep up with you and make things exciting. it is not enough for them to outright cheat and, say, overtake you at the last second; but it is enough that you shouldn't rest on your hands.

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RC Wars

Who does not love radio controlled cars? You go into a little arena with at least one other car, and your goal is to slam it until the enemy explodes. On a collision, whichever car is moving faster gives the majority of the damage. If you can trap a car against a wall, you can tap it several times for a combo.

If you are the victim of too many hits, try to keep yourself oriented so the strongest part of your car is facing the enemy. This way, if you are hit again, chances are you will survive.

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Saucer Soccer

In Saucer Soccer, you hop into a hovercraft and are placed in a large arena with three other players in teams of two. Using the D-pad to move, you drive around and try to grab a soccer ball. The opponents have two goals: one high and one low. The low goal is worth one point, and it can be driven into when you have the ball. The high goal is worth two points, but requires some accurate shooting.

You can pass and call for passes from your teammate, but Saucer Soccer is a very individual game where, if you can outrun your opponents, you probably win. Your teammate is better used to run interference, bumping away your chasing opponents, rather than to set up teamwork shots.

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Saucer Sumo

Saucer Sumo puts you in control of a little flying saucer on a small platform. You can steer the saucer around with the D-pad or left stick, and you can hit a turbo button to get a little burst of speed. The purpose is to knock your opponents off the platform, whilst trying to stay on it as long as possible.

There are three modes, and all of them can be played with one, two, or three other players (AI or human). The first is a limited-life mode, where each player has seven lives. The second goes by knockouts, with the winner being the one who scores the most. The third is a team-based two-on-two affair. Either way, there are a variety of powerups and obstacles that can pop up to mess with your head and your saucer.

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Shooting Gallery

The shooting galleries are timed first-person shooters. Simply aim at the targets and pull the trigger to score. The only point here is to outscore your opponent, although all the shooting galleries have timers that go way too long.

There are four themes of shooting galleries: Blackbeard's Booty, Ghoul Gunner, Prospector Stakeout, and Star Sniper.

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Shootzone

Shootzones are first-person shooters. Move forward, back, and strafe with one stick, while turning and looking with the other. Each of the four Shootzone stages have five special items which add to your score, but do nothing else. There is a variety of weapons, and though the specific appearance may change depending on the theme, they operate the same way. You have pistols, a shotgun, and a machine gun at your disposal.

The shotgun is by far the best weapon no matter what stage you are on. It scores tons of points, and normally one-hit kills the enemy robots.

The game is over if you die, if you kill 50 enemies, or if time runs out. The enemies never cause much damage, so you would probably have to make an effort to die.

The four themes of Shootzones are: Hauntings, Pirate Raiders, Robot Invasion, and Wild Frontier. Any can be played as normal, co-op, or battle (deathmatch).

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Sparkle Island

Sparkle Island resembles the old classic Bubble Bobble. You play as a little cat who can jump and shoot. Your purpose is to shoot all the enemies in a level, then head out the exit. Each fallen enemy leaves a little chick-looking animal called a Feeyo. Touching a Feeyo causes it to follow you. You get bonus points for having Feeyos following you when you touch the door.

The catch is that, once all the enemies go down, a giant white creature appears and chase you around. It goes through walls, and is invincible. This means if you mess around too long in a level, trying to get Feeyos or whatever, you are killed before you know it. If you have to sacrifice a Feeyo to get out of a level safely, do it.

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Trampolines

Bouncing on trampolines, you score points by doing tricks in the air. There are three buttons to do tricks with, but the secret does not lie in pressing the buttons alone. Pressing the three in any order will trigger a special trick. you need massive air to do one of these safely.

Just doing the trick does not get you anywhere. While you are flying, you need to be holding down a direction or two on the D-pad to spin. Rotating, back flipping, and pulling off a trick all at once leads to massive points. As you come back to Earth, remember to hit the jump button with proper timing to get back high into the air.

Tricks do not lose value, so if you find one you are comfortable with, keep doing it. All that matters is your spin while you were doing the trick, and whether you landed it clean. The secret to high scoring is to adjust your fall to make sure you jump back up cleanly. Stopping—because you fell on your head, for instance—is the lead cause of low scores.

There are five themes, but they do not affect anything other than the background and music.

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Trojan Quest and Trojan Quest Survival

Trojan Quest resembles Gauntlet. You have one of four characters to choose from, and you go through several dungeons of baddies. This is definitely more fun with another player, and luckily you can have several playing at once.

Each character has a ranged attack, and you can fire while moving in a different direction. You can use the right stick or the face buttons to use your ranged attacks; using the right stick allows you to attack in 360 degrees, while using the button only gives you eight options. All characters can also melee by walking into the enemy, although for most of them, this is not as good an option as just staying back.

Survival Mode uses the Trojan Quest format to send wave after wave after wave of enemies after you. You have one tank of health and no recovery items, so you die. it is only a matter of how many enemies you can take out with you before you fall.

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