Phew, that was an intense ride :)
There have been 2-3 slightly bigger issues for some people that had to be hotfixed, but overall I’d say the launch went pretty smoothly!

It has been great to watch all of the reactions, ratings, reviews and feedback. Thank you!
We have an update to Version 1.1 for you today to resolve most of the more pressing small bugs and confusing things you have reported.
For the next update we will focus on improvements to the coaster track builder to make finishing tracks more comfortable.

Changelog

- added a proper time countdown display for scenarios that require holding the goals at 100% completion for a while
- added number showing the current progress to goals list
- added hovering on the date display on the main menu shows the remaining time until the end of the month
- added land cost per tile display to land purchase tab
- added confirmation dialog for hiring second research team
- added more generic deco shapes
- added tooltips to finance sheet lines
- updated Chanute Airfield to make deliveries building more noticeable; made it more clear that the runway is just a ground texture, not a path; reduced terrain cost
- updated Coral Caldera to start with prebuilt transport system tubes into the main build area
- made area highlights in tutorial more noticeable
- reduced research durations by 10%
- reduced guests preferred ride intensities in Maple Meadows and Chanute Airfield slightly
- fixed campaign progress not getting synchronized through Steam Cloud
- fixed some cases where the campaign map unlock animation would not run properly
- fixed a case where the token for completing the optional goals would not unlock
- fixed a case where the token unlock animation for optional goals would play when it had already been played before
- fixed black screen when running the game on some Macs
- fixed performance issues on iMac/retina resolution Macs
- fixed a couple of achievements problems
- fixed missing sound effects when building coaster segments
- fixed tutorial getting softlocked when not building the Carousel flat on the ground
- fixed tutorial getting softlocked when destroying the Carousel
- fixed music not playing at intended volume after restarting game
- fixed Steel Coaster default blueprints not displaying prices and showing outdated stats
- fixed a case where the lines in the finance spreadsheet were misaligned
- fixed Build Challenge map missing some decorations
- fixed a case where the mouse could stop working after hitting the Escape key

Just three more days until launch!
As a quick reminder, the price of the game will change to USD $29.99 / EUR €24.99 around November 28th, so this is the last chance to grab the game at its current Early Access price.

Devlog

We’re happy to announce that in addition to the existing English and German translations the game will fully support French, Russian and Simplified Chinese at launch!

We don’t have a lot of experience with translations yet, so if you notice anything weird with them please let us know. We will also consider adding more translations in the future.

And if you took a look at the Steam store page recently you might have noticed that the 1.0 update will also add a whole bunch of Achievements :)

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.