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If you build it they will ride
I was 11 years old when I first received Theme Park on the Mega Drive (if you’ve had to google either of those things then I suddenly feel a few more grey hairs coming on), and it was my first experience at park management, and wow did my ADHD show! Seriously, when you’re counting tile distances between parallel walkways to keep them symmetrical then it clearly is saying something, and that something was “I’m the best park designer who ever lived!” Fun fact, I now work as an engineer that specialises on space management of industrial machines; no, serious!
Those 16-bit days made me enjoy constructing the most elegant, cleanly designed, and thrilling park to ever grace the console, which people are doing today with the likes of Roller Coaster Tycoon Adventure Deluxe (I haven’t played it myself but putting it in here will hopefully make Zatu Games less angry that I’m namedropping 30+ year old games they can’t link.) But what about the board game genre? Sure, we have some amazing games like Unfair! But what about my desire to ‘construct’ a park, dimensionally…
Well today I may just have that tonic for your needs,
This, is Steam Park.
What is it in a nutshell?
· Steam Park is a 2-4 player theme-park building game where you’ll construct your rides, expand your park, attract visitors, and clean up the copious amount of dirt you incur along the way because your visitors are Robots. Yes, you are building a theme park for Robots.
· Players roll 6 dice to create their actions for the turn, re-rolling as many times as they wish while being aware of the turn-order tokens being up for grabs in order of those who commit to their dice results first, and the earlier you are the better the outcome.
· Rides come in various sizes and colours, and they can occupy robot visitors of matching colours. Diversify your ride, expand carefully, and try to attract the robot visits of the right colour so that they can stay on your rides until the game ends, earning you money every turn.
· The game lasts for 6 rounds, and the person with the most amount of Dinari (the game’s currency) wins.
How does it play?
Mechanically Steam Park is simple to grasp, but the mechanism itself is nothing short of elegant. I admire any game that can utilise its theme with the game’s structure and use it to balance out the gameplay in a way that is just so tidy; ironic given the waste management you need to do in game.
You win by having the most money, and you get money by attracting visitors to your park, but more visitors bring more dirt with them, and more dirt will incur heavy penalties at the end of the game.
The forces players that focus on building rides and accruing visitors early to take time out to manage the waste they create, acting as a rubber band mechanic for those lagging behind; and given how your turn structures are governed by the outcome of the dice then you can’t always rely on how each turn will pan out, and that’s not going into the turn order tokens.
In Steam Park you don’t alternate who goes first, you fight for it. Each player gets 6 dice that contain 1 of each of the 5 actions and 1 blank space. Players simultaneously roll these dice as many times as they like, banking the outcomes they like, and once a player is the first to bank their results they receive the 1st player token, allowing them to go first and receive a bonus that cleans up a lot of their dirt. Players that are later to the party receive less of a bonus, and in some cases a penalty for being the last to commit to their rolls. This creates a wonderful game of “Do I stick with this? Do I re-roll these 2 dice again? Do I have time?”.
The action dice mechanics are very easy to understand; for example, to build the 3-person rollercoaster you would need to spend 3 ‘build’ symbols, if you only rolled 2 ‘build’ symbols then you’ll have to settle for the 2-person rollercoaster. There are 6 visitor colours, with a 1-person ride, 2-person ride, and a 3-person ride available to build for each of those colours. Whenever you’re attracting visitors you take the bag of visitors, which contains 1 of each colour already in it, then add a colour of your own for each visitor dice rolled, shaking it up and drawing that many visitors from the bag. If a visitor colour matches your ride, they occupy it and provide you with money and dirt for the rest of the game, but if it doesn’t match then they return to the supply.
To add further mechanics to the game you can also build stalls that provide you with benefits throughout the game, which can come in the form of extra clean-up, dice re-rolls, etc. And bonus cards that can be played to snatch some extra Dinari. The game has no ‘gotcha’ mechanics, you are simply outcompeting your opponent’s park, through clever space management, clever use of your dice, and a little bit of luck along the way.
How does it look?
It’s charming, not an adjective I use often in board games, but it springs to mind when I admire the cute cartoony robotic rides that are literally 3D; I mean seriously, it’s an actual 3D ride that your visitors can sit atop of, that is actually charming! And I appreciate that for certain connoisseurs who barely blink at a fully fledged model unless it’s fully painted that might seem a little ‘meh’, but it's all to do with the fact it fits the cutesy and welcoming design aesthetic and is such pleasant solution to keep the game affordable.
The artwork would not be done any justice if I simply said it was ‘intentionally simplistic’, because it’s on brand for the tone of the game. It’s one of those ‘it’s nothing to write home about’ but I would see this kind of art on trinkets at an ETSY store and immediately would forward the images to my partner, it’s cute and adorable, which is why it feels disingenuous that I will be giving the art a fairly lower score; you could wish for more detailed art but I think it wouldn’t look right if they did.
Hats off to the 3D rides, they’re cute, and I love building my park with them, you feel like your park is growing. Steam Park feels like it was designed as a project of love, it has a cute premise, a unique cartoony-style, and it was clear that the designers wanted it to appeal to people of all ages.
What’s awesome about the game?
The premise is lovingly unique, the actual construction of a theme park for robots, and the robots don’t feel shoe-horned in, they contribute to the mechanic of dirt build-up in your park.
This game will appeal to a lot of people of all ages, it correctly serves as a Eurogamer style with very little interaction with your opponent, but the turns go fast enough that you feel engaged.
I love physical space management, a Feast for Odin gives me those Tetris-like vibes, so when you introduce ride building with rules on how they can connect, maintaining distances around stalls, I feel compelled to construct this park that maximises all available space.
It’s a cosy game that doesn’t want to screw any players over; again, just getting its target audience right.
What’s not so great about the game?
My partner and I recently played a great game with just us 2, and at the end of it we said, “That was great…but do you feel like it’s missing something?”. We had to think about it, but there was this small feeling of “Oh, it’s a shame it’s over.” Like a great meal that you know was tasty but can’t recall the flavours. I think the mechanics are tightly nailed down to be comfortable for many players, but I think some in a 2-player scenario might find the game a little short, or a little thin in places. The game doesn’t ramp up as the rounds go on, so there’s no feeling of starting off small and getting bigger and better with your expansions as you approach the final round, and that’s okay, but for us I think we would have liked that.
Players are encouraged to quickly grab the turn-order tokens after they commit to their dice, with rules given to settle disputes over arguments when it appears to be a tie. This game is not a dexterity game, and I’m not a fan of ‘snatching with lightning speed’ mechanics that can potentially cause me to knock over my constructed rides as I’m rather clumsy, so we opt for calling out when we’re done.
A mild nit-pick can also be made about the dice, the symbols on them are fine and clear enough but it’s a shame that the dirt symbols aren’t very clear; honestly, even writing that section made me reflect and say “no, you’re really nitpicking this, it’s not that big a deal”, and I’m leaving that in as a reminder to myself that when you take games and put them under a microscope for reviewing you can sometimes get lost in the fact that no game is perfect in every measure, but the main points should always be “Did we have fun? Will we play this again?”
What’s the verdict?
And the answer to that previous question is, yes.
We had fun, we will play it again.
I really wish I could figure out what Steam Park is missing for it to be a really stand-out game, but you also have to remember that I’ve been fortunate enough to play many games in my time, and it’s very easy to fall into the trap of being over-analytical.
I catch myself re-writing many aspects of this review, I think I’m charmed by Steam Park’s smooth gameplay design that it warrants the phrase ‘I can’t be mad at it.’ I think this is a solid choice for a game whether you have kids of not but grab some friends and make it more exciting; and hey, if you felt it was a little short, nothing to suggest you can’t house rules a few extra rounds for the fun of it.
Grab yourself a copy of Steam Park and get swept up in its majesty, don’t go in expecting to have your mind blown, but do expect a good time. Don’t let the overall scoring fool you into thinking this game is nothing short of fun, I just can’t guarantee how often you’ll pick up this game compared to others on your shelf.
But it’ll always remain on your shelf, and whether it’s a month of even a year from your last game, you’ll at some point catch yourself saying “Hey do you fancy a game of Steam Park?”
“Absolutely!”
