Hey! If you haven’t seen it yet - the 1.0 version of Parkitect with the campaign mode will release next week on November 29th, and there’s a trailer for it here!
We’ve been working on the campaign mode for about a year now and planned it for much longer, so let’s talk a bit about it now that it’s revealed!
Design
All the way back in 2014 we knew that we wanted to have some sort of map for the campaign instead of just a list of levels, but it wasn’t clear yet what that would look like. Initially we thought about doing a globe, but then another game did that :)
Then for the longest time we thought it could work like a rolling pin, sort of like the world in Animal Crossing games. But bending the map like that would have made it much more complicated to build, and it would also not have fit the rest of the game too well. So we decided to roughly match the look of the terrain and decoration that you find inside the game itself.
Now it became a bit like the overworld maps you can find in Mario games.
We didn’t want players to be able to see all of the levels from the start and wanted the map to be obscured in the beginning and only get uncovered as you progress, to make you wonder a bit about what’s still to come.
To pique your curiosity even further we wanted the map have multiple themes and biomes that would roughly match the scenarios you’d find. Fitting all of the different scenario settings into one connected map in a way that somewhat makes sense was pretty tricky, especially since the campaign should also start easy and get more difficult as you progress. So we couldn’t simply move some scenarios to a different place on the map where they would have fit in better geographically because their order was somewhat fixed.
We went with clouds for obscuring the map, simply because it made sense. We also like how there sometimes are holes in the cloud layer that let you get a small glimpse ahead at what’s yet to come
At one point we thought about changing the map to look like a blueprint that gets turned into reality. We liked the look of the effect, but there would have been so much animation and movement going on that it was distracting from the important part, which is the next level getting unlocked.
We slowly started having a nice landscape, but the map was still feeling a bit empty… we wanted a bit more visual feedback showing which levels you have already beaten.
So we added these buildings - each building resembles a scenario you have completed and can be found within that scenario. It is like a trophy that you unlock as reward for winning the scenario, to remind you of the level you played and to make the map feel more alive thanks to you.
The way it slams onto the map with a shockwave that pushes away the clouds is pretty satisfying too!
And we think now it’s also looking a bit like the park maps that you can find at many theme parks, with the main attractions being drawn it at unrealistically big proportions.
Gameplay
Due to the branching paths there are usually 2-3 different scenarios you can choose from to progress, so if you get stuck somewhere you have the option to continue with a different level.
After you have beaten a level you can play it in sandbox mode, so if you want to revisit it and build a more complex park with unlimited money, goals disabled or to build some rides that are usually not available in that level you can do that! We hope this will give creative players a small incentive to give the campaign a try.
You might have seen the little coin pop up in the level unlock animation above. You get one coin for beating the scenario (and you can’t buy them with real money or anything like that, just to be clear about that). Additionally, you can get a second coin by beating all of the optional goals of the scenario. You don’t have to beat the optional goals to move on to the next scenario, but it can still make sense to go for them if you feel like you need an extra challenge or to get the second coin, because at some points you will need a certain amount of coins to progress.
So if you beat some of the optional goals this can also allow you to skip some levels.
Every level has at least an optional time challenge goal where you need to complete the scenario by a certain date (and might have to restart if you miss it!) and sometimes a couple of extra challenges.
This adds a hard mode to every level for players who like this sort of challenge with a reward that’s actually useful, and without blocking people who prefer taking their time or simply aren’t that fast from progressing to the next scenario. It’s hard to please everyone, but we hope this will be a good compromise to let as many players as possible enjoy the game in the way they want to play it.