Coaster Creator 3D

Genre: Simulation

Players: 1

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Review:

Coaster Creator 3D is Simulation game released on Nintendo 3DS in 2013. Where other Roller Coaster “tycoon”-style games often have you managing a theme park, and designing roller coasters tends to be a secondary consideration, here the gameplay is squarely focused on creating different kinds of roller coasters and then riding them.

The graphics here are fairly simple, with unimpressive environments and with “people” in the roller coaster that look like Playmobile figurines. While mostly the graphics are nothing special, it is impressive seeing the game render your increasingly complex creations on the fly. But perhaps more important than this is the way the game gives players a great sense of speed when “riding” a coaster in first-person, which combined with the stereoscopic 3D visuals do a pretty good job of immersing players in the experience of riding a speeding, looping, corkscrewing roller coaster. This is backed by mostly decent sounds for the coasters themselves, and a largely forgettable synthesized soundtrack.

The gameplay itself has a lot of potential, but it doesn’t always do a good job of preparing players how to use the tools they’re given.

Players have both a campaign which acts like an extended tutorial, as well as a sandbox mode where they can create and place as they please. The campaign mode requires you to use each of the tools at your disposal to solve different problems, but often doesn’t make it clear the nuances of how those tools are used or how you’re expected to use them to solve the problem.

Unfortunately though, playing through this mode is mandatory, and not just because it’s your best way to get acquainted with all the game’s tools. Rather, to get a decent variety of cosmetic enhancements for the sandbox mode, you need to first play through the campaign to unlock them.

Beyond the confusing tools here, one of the other issues is that actually placing and moving the track here is extremely fiddly, and at times the game behaves in odd and unexpected ways. In one level, I found that every time I adjusted things at one end of the track, the track at the opposite end of the loop would inexplicably start falling. At times, telling the game to create loops and corkscrews seems to have the game decide almost on a whim how those features will manifest, no matter how you try to twist and rotate the track prior to adding those features.

Also, manipulating objects in 3D space is difficult in its own right, as the game only lets you rotate the touchscreen view by 45-degree angles, and the view in the top screen doesn’t reflect the changing view on the bottom screen at all. It gets especially bad when parts of the track get jumbled close together, making it an ordeal to select one specific part out of the chaos.

Still, I have to admit it’s impressive the features this game includes in its track creation – in addition to loops, corkscrews, and twists, you can individually tilt the track, change its pathing or orientation, and nearby tracks will adjust to ensure everything stays connected. If you can manage the game’s fiddly mechanics and puzzle out its controls, there’s a lot of freedom to create the sort of roller coaster you want. But to get to that freedom, it feels like running through a gauntlet of issues.

Ultimately, the audience for Coaster Creator 3D is going to be pretty limited – this is strictly a game for players who want to design roller coasters, and then simulate riding in them, and more specifically, it is for a subset of that audience that doesn’t mind dealing with a frustrating, finicky, poorly-explained design interface to create those roller coasters. As such, this is definitely not a game for everyone, though for a mere $6 there are certainly some players out there who will get their money’s worth out of this game.

tl;dr – Coaster Creator 3D is Simulation game that has you designing and simulating riding in roller coasters. There’s a lot of freedom here to create the sort of coaster you want, but that freedom comes with a poorly-explained interface, a frustrating tutorial in the form of a campaign, and fiddly mechanics that make it harder to get into the gameplay than I’d prefer. There is some genuine fun to be had here, but you really have to work to get to it.

Grade: C-

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