Idle Theme Park Tycoon App Review
App Info
Price: Free
Overview
Idle Theme Park Tycoon puts you in charge of building your very own theme park! With the help of investors, you can open new rides, upgrade various aspects of the park and keep the money rolling in from satisfied customers.
Features include:
- Build rides to grow the park
- Hire and pay employees
- Advertise around town to bring in customers
- Upgrade the attractions and features
- Read customer reviews and act on them
Quality
Idle Theme Park Tycoon is a high quality app. The app does set up a system where players must watch advertisements in order to progress in the game, but there are choices about how often. However, there were several ads that apparently crashed the game, causing it to freeze or shut down completely, which was a bit frustrating at times. This likely varies according to which ad plays. Fortunately, progress can be saved in the cloud so it’s possible to restart pretty much where you were (or change devices). I did not see a tutorial that I could reference during the game-it takes players through a rather long tutorial section when you first use it, but I’m not sure if there’s another way to get questions answered as you are playing.
Education
This app is not intended to be educational, but teens will learn a lot about juggling their attention. It does require reading to keep up with the choices and the customer comments. Players will need to keep track of the physical improvements to the park, the parking, the cashiers, and even the restrooms by responding to customer reviews and completing the in-game “missions” to grow the park. So in this way, the game encourages higher-order thinking skills, persistence, and experimentation.
Entertainment
The game’s graphics puts players into a bird’s eye view position. You can watch as tiny cars pull into the parking lot and teensy people scurry around enjoying the features that have been added to the park. It is fun to watch as the park becomes more and more popular, bringing in more and more people. The one drawback would be the pacing of the early parts of the game. The Investor overseeing the park walks players through the basic features and gives a few hints about what to do next, but it takes nearly 10 minutes to work through it.
Value
This app is free to download, and has in-app purchases as well as advertisements to watch that will help players progress in the game. In fact, there are lots of opportunities to watch ads, but players do get to choose when or whether they choose to do so. I did not feel like the in-app purchases were clearly marked- I clicked on one upgrade and suddenly was asked for my credit card information.
Child Friendliness
This app is not particularly child-friendly, so would be recommended for teens and up. Parents should be aware that the app includes in-app purchases and frequent advertisement videos that help players progress in the game, thereby encouraging users to watch many of them.
- YES external links
- YES plentiful 3rd party ads
- YES in-app purchase