RollerCoaster Tycoon Wonderworks may finally be the great new entry fans have waited 20 years for

The RollerCoaster Tycoon series has had more ups and downs than… well, you can figure out such a painfully obvious analogy for yourself.

The original 1999 game, created by Scottish programmer Chris Sawyer, may not have been the first attempt at an amusement park management sim – after all, Theme Park had been released five years earlier – but its level of detail was stunning at the time.

RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 followed in 2002 and added a greater emphasis on verticality, making it easier to place rides higher in the air or underground. Then Sawyer handed the keys over to Frontier Developments for RollerCoaster Tycoon 3, which took the series 3D for the first time.

Since the release of that third game in 2004, however, it’s fair to say the RollerCoaster Tycoon series has only done well when it’s looked back to its past successes, rather than offering anything new.

A 3DS spin-off in 2012 was basic and clunky, a mobile attempt (bravely titled RollerCoaster Tycoon 4, implying it was the fourth main game) was riddled with microtransactions and wait timers, and 2016’s RollerCoaster Tycoon World was an awful PC-only release which looked ugly and performed poorly.

Indeed, in recent years the only success Atari has had with the series is its re-releases of the original trilogy, in the shape of RollerCoaster Tycoon Classic (which bundles the first two games) and RollerCoaster Tycoon 3: Complete Edition. They continue to be great, but it does mean fans (myself included) have had nothing new – well, nothing new that’s any good, at least – for more than two decades now.

This could finally change with RollerCoaster Tycoon Wonderworks, an all-new entry in the series which promises to hark back to its original glory days while introducing some new features of its own. After being shown an hour-long demo of the game behind closed doors at Gamescom, I’m happy to say the early signs are good.

The first positive sign is that the game is being developed by Springloaded Games, the studio behind the enjoyable Let’s Build a Zoo and its ambitious upcoming RPG spin-off Let’s Build a Dungeon. This is a team that’s handled management simulation games before, so there’s a pedigree involved.

I was shown the game’s first scenario, which serves as its tutorial. Whereas the original RollerCoaster Tycoon started the player off with a small but shiny collection of rides, this time the game goes harder on the idea that you’re starting from scratch, and so your first rides are janky, makeshift affairs which look like they were put together in your shed.

The seats in the carousel are oil drums that have been painted with bright colours, the ride entrances and exits are wooden shacks, and the food and drink counters are basically collapsible tables with barrels full of pickles and jugs of lemonade.

As is often the case in games like this, the money you earn can then be allocated to a research department, which will create new rides, shops, scenery and other amenities over time. There are some tweaks here, however, which mean it doesn’t work exactly like it does in other games.

For starters, the research roadmap isn’t a linear one. While you can eventually end up researching everything, every time you start a new research project you’re given a selection to choose from, rather than just being told later that the team has come up with something you may not have been that interested in.

As well as this, the research department isn’t some unseen force, it’s now an actual building you have to place somewhere in your park (most likely tucked away in the corner, I’d guess). Actual staff work there, and they have to use the toilet and rest like everyone else, so you have to bear this in mind if you want your research to keep progressing smoothly.

This extends to the rest of the staff in your theme park. Whereas in the earlier RollerCoaster Tycoon games you could create a food stall and that was basically it (other than setting prices and the like), this time you have to bear in mind that the people working on those stalls will sometimes shut up shop to nip out for a quick pee, or have to eventually stop working so they can sleep.

I was told that players have different potential solutions for this (as they do with countless other aspects of running the park). They can either employ extra staff and rotate them as they tire out (though obviously this comes with extra expense and more man-management), or they can set opening times for the park – usually it’s open 24 hours but if you set a closing and opening time your staff can go home to rest before coming back the next day, fighting fit, with no need to replace them with anyone else.

This is just one very small example of the decisions the player will face while making their park. Do you make the ride queues long to fit more guests onto them, even though you risk them getting bored? If there’s an elderly person walking slowly up to the park and holding up the queue, do you send him home to speed up the flow of visitors entering, and take a hit to your reputation as a result? Do you make the rides faster, even though that makes them more susceptible to breaking down or even crashing and hurting the guests?

This last one is a big part of the game, not least with the rollercoaster creation tool. This is still in development but looked very impressive from what I was shown, with things like station length, banks, dips, bends, loops and lift chains all very easy to put together.

You also get a real-time look at how the car will move with a little ghost car moving around as you build the course, leading to all sorts of hilarity every time they drive off the edge of your unfinished track, sending the little ghost rider flying.

There’s also the option to turn on realistic physics, or leave them off for a more lenient, beginner-friendly experience. Some of the criticism levied at the game’s announce trailer was based on the rollercoaster physics, but I was told this was simply because the Realistic Physics option (as seen in the above screenshot) was turned off.

Players can also open a Ride Simulator menu for many of their other rides. This brings them to a detailed console where they can mess around with numerous parameters, and see how it affects the guests’ expected reaction to the ride.

Should you make the giant swing – which moves with real-time physics rather than a preset animation, incidentally – last longer and increase its acceleration, increasing its intensity and guest demand, even if it means it’ll run fewer times before it’s damaged and has to be shut down for repairs?

All this is presented with a lovely new look which goes with 3D polygonal visuals but is restrained with them to ensure the game remains visually faithful to the original RollerCoaster Tycoon games.

As well as allowing for the aforementioned real-time physics on rides, this also allows for some beautiful lighting effects – when time speeds up and you see the shadow of your rollercoaster sliding across the ground like a sundial as night falls, it’s wonderful stuff.

Just now it’s still reasonably early days for RollerCoaster Tycoon Wonderworks. An Early Access release is planned on Steam later this winter at a price of $24.99 / € 24.99, and Atari expects it to be there for a year or so before it moves to a full release.

During that time new features such as water rides, weather effects, “a broader meta-game progression” and a ‘classic’ rollercoaster builder for the old-timers will be added, with player feedback being taken on board along the way.

So far, then, things are looking positive. The series has taken so many knocks over the past two decades that it’s understandable that players will be suspicious, whether fairly or unfairly – there are already YouTubers declaring it “terrible” and making assumptions based on the trailer alone – but it does feel like the series is in good hands now.

I was told that while series creator Chris Sawyer isn’t directly involved in the game’s creation, he did speak with the team at the start of development and has been getting regular updates on its progress. No news on that front is good news, I reckon, and if the man behind RollerCoaster Tycoon isn’t objecting to how Wonderworks currently looks, then until I get my hands on it and take it for a ride myself, I’m certainly not going to object either.