Park Beyond is a Willy Wonka take on park management

In Park Beyond, you will “impossify” your creations.

That’s a new word developer Limbic Entertainment invented to describe what you’ll do in Park Beyond, a new wacky park sim. This game strays from reality, allowing you to create roller coasters and rides that aren’t possible in other sims.

Despite its silliness, Park Beyond will have a choice-driven story mode, telling a rags to riches tale. It’s shaping up to be unlike any park management game we’ve seen before.

Here’s everything we know about Park Beyond.

When is the Park Beyond release date?

Currently, Park Beyond does not have a set release date, though publisher Bandai Namco is aiming to launch sometime in 2022.

What are the Park Beyond platforms?

Limbic is currently developing Park Beyond for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. When asked about whether it will come to Nintendo Switch or older generation platforms, Limbic’s CEO Stephan Winter says it would be “tough.”

There will be “thousands of visitors” at your park at any given time, along with the complexities of the rides, their sound effects, animations, and everything else — meaning a Switch version likely isn’t in the cards.

“Bringing this to Switch without very hard compromises would be challenging,” Winter tells Inverse. “Today, it’s not on the list — never say never — but I’m not sure what it will be like in one or two years. I don’t want to say no, but right now, no.”

Is there a Park Beyond trailer?

There is! The trailer captures the essence of Park Beyond’s characters and “impossification,” as Limbic calls it. It also shows off some of the wild creations you can make, hence the game’s name. It aims to go “Beyond” what you’d expect from a park management game.

What is Park Beyond gameplay like?

There will be two main gameplay components: The park creation, and the management aspect. Both are interwoven throughout the 30-hour single-player campaign, which will feature choice-based missions that give you agency to create what you’d like.

As for the creation aspect, Limbic is aiming to make it as user-friendly as possible across all platforms. Oftentimes, games like these are designed with PC in mind, but Park Beyond will be approachable from a control standpoint, even on console.

The main goal in Park Beyond is to create the wackiest rides possible — even if they aren’t possible in real life. Perhaps you want to connect several Ferris wheels to one another to make a gigantic rotating loop of destruction. Maybe you’d like a Kraken to juggle submarines found at a children’s ride.

Or, as Creative Director Johannes Reithmann describes to Inverse, “What if you could get shot out of a cannon across the whole park?”

But beyond the creation component is the management aspect, which will allow you to run the theme park while ensuring it’s a profitable business. The entire premise is a constant give-and-take, balancing the enjoyment of the visitors with ensuring the park is generating enough money.

For instance, if you create an impressive ride that towers over anything anyone has seen before, it will no doubt be fun. But how much will this ride cost to develop? It may very well not be a sustainable business decision to keep this ride up and running, so it’s your job to balance fun and profits (which is coincidentally a fantastic analogy for making video games).

The great thing is that players won’t be locked into min-maxing every aspect of the park if they don’t want to. Limbic says players can do that if they want, but there will be several customization options that allow players to enjoy the game however they’d like. There will be options to have unlimited money so players can simply focus on creation, while those that want to get into the nitty-gritty of the sim aspects will be able to as well.

While the game won’t have a traditional multiplayer mode, there will be some sort of sharing option implemented, allowing players to try out various creations from all over the world. Though, it’s still unclear what this mode will look like when the game ships.

What is the Park Beyond story?

Limbic loves to tell stories in its games, and Park Beyond will be no different. In it, you experience the story of theme park veteran Phil, and stern executive Izzy, both of whom represent the two major aspects of the game: Fun and management.

In it, you’ll get to make choices that will change the way the park’s creation unfolds. Though, don’t expect a choice-driven experience in the same vein as Until Dawn or Telltale’s The Walking Dead. Instead, your choices will impact how your park performs, with multiple avenues to take to arrive at a successful business venture.

Will Park Beyond be good for newcomers?

Accessibility is a major aspect of Park Beyond. To reach as wide an audience as possible, Limbic has implemented a tutorial into the game’s story mode. Rather than having a monotonous checklist to get through, the game’s characters will introduce you to features in a way that feels natural. The goal is to slowly onboard players, with special care to not scare away those who may not be familiar with the genre.

Limbic understand that players may be afraid of in-depth park sims, so its developers have made it a priority to create something that’s easy to get into. Once you’ve finished the campaign, that’s when the sandbox mode “kicks in,” allowing you to do whatever you’d like.

Park Beyond lands on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC sometime in 2022.