The backstory to Thrillville is a straightforward one. Your uncle Mortimer has been injured and left you a theme park to manage. It's up to you to maintain the park and attract guests to stay one step ahead of the evil Globo-Joy Corporation that is your main competition. To do so, gamers will have to work through 150 missions, design and maintain a park, and keep tabs on the park goers' demands. The missions range from the simple introductory ones of designing or placing a ride on the ground to besting certain mini-game conditions.
Thrillville brings the action to the ground level. As the park manager, you'll have to go into the park and explore your property. Talking with guests will allow you to learn what sorts of things could be improved and present new challenges. Each guest will remember you and develop a relationship with you, so helping them out and meeting their needs will go a long way towards keeping them in your park spending their cash. Along with park goers to interact with, you'll also be able to recruit and train employees. Training happens through mini quests where you take control of the employee and show them the ropes. Cleaning up puke and garbage may not be the most glorious of jobs, but it's a necessary one for park upkeep and you'll probably want to keep your guests happy by securing someone to do the dirty work for you.
Social interaction may be fun, but this is a theme park game. What about the rides? At any point, you can run up to one of your coasters or games and take it for a spin. Being a manager has its perks - you won't be waiting in any lines. If you've ever wondered what it would be like to ride in your own custom designed coaster, Thrillville will give you that opportunity.
Designing rides in Thrillville has been made as accessible as possible. With a simple use of the analog stick and a few button pushes, you can easily add twists, barrel rolls, loops, and death defying drops. If you get bored before you're totally done designing the course, you can even have the computer finish it off for you. Coasters are given ratings for how much of a thrill they deliver and how sick riders feel once you've sent them into twenty straight spirals. Pre-made coaster blueprints can be purchased or found within the game, though designing your own ride has its rewards as you'll be able to surpass the ratings of these pre-made courses by careful track layout. Since Thrillville isn't aiming for realism, you won't have to worry about creating a ride that would technically kill someone from too much acceleration or from tearing itself apart. If you can imagine it, you can make it and ride on it.
Aside from the traditional rollercoaster, Thrillville will sport log rides, merry-go-rounds, children's train rides and more. Each of the rides can be placed in one of five different parks across fifteen differently themed areas. We were shown several of these, including one revolving around superheroes, a Lord of the Rings inspired area, and a futuristic space area. All told, there is a huge amount of area to explore and customize with nearly any sort of ride or attraction you can think of.
The crux of Thrillville is its mini games which come in a great variety. All 22 of the little entertainment hubs that you can build are playable in the park or from the main menu. These games fit within the world of theme parks. For example, you can build and then play on your own miniature golf course, hop on trampolines and do stunts, race go-karts or bumper cars. Our personal favorite was the pop-gun first-person shooter. Blasting corks at little mechanical enemies in a western themed stage is just as fun as you'd expect it to be. For sheer oddity, nothing can beat Sparkle Island, a classic coin-op inspired platforming game that will have you wondering what maniac was behind the design. The mechanical cat that comes for you at the end of each stage will give you nightmares.
Most of these games can be played against your friends with up to four players taking part in the action. For the fastest multiplayer gaming, you can hop into a game quickly from the main menu, or you can set up a tournament to see who rules the mini-game world. The PSP version will require four copies of the Thrillville UMD for the complete multiplayer experience as game sharing on one UMD is not supported. As a consolation to PSP users, it will be the only format where users can share their track and coaster designs with each other.
From what we've seen of Thrillville so far, LucasArts have managed to successfully bring together the most accessible parts of park simulation and party games. The game isn't nearly as deep as the theme park games of the PC world, but that was the intent from the start. Instead of worrying about whether you've placed the restroom in the right place, gamers will be able to focus on enjoying everything a theme park has to offer. The game layout is incredibly open, allowing players to pick and choose what they want to work on next. Whether you're interested in laying out the park, playing mini-games all day, or simply wandering around enjoying the fruits of your labor, the option is left up to you. Thrillville also seems to have the right amount of pick up and play accessibility for the younger crowd while still allowing more focused gamers to spend hours designing the ultimate ride within the perfect park.
Thrillville is slated to ship November 21, just in time for holiday shopping, on the PS2, Xbox, and PSP. Provided the game sells well, LucasArts is looking to turn this into a new franchise and continue the series on other platforms in the future.