Hello everyone,
I'm Azael, and today I would like to give you some hopefully good news about the future of the Park Studio Project.
1. The plan for the future.
Park Studio's next release will be Beta 1.0, there is no release date for that update.
The goal is to provide an almost fully featured game in the far future instead of continuously creating small Alpha updates with bugged features that require complicated fixing.
Targeting Beta will allow to re-create the entire game almost from the ground up in order to correct issues and improve the game with way more freedom, not having to worry about compatibility with Alpha.
This also means that Alpha saves will be entirely incompatible with the future Beta releases, since all of Park Studio's features will be reworked in some way.
2. Extending the audience of the game.
In order to be financially viable, the target audience of Park Studio will be extended to include casual players, a lot of features will be heavily simplified, while keeping advanced controls available for advanced players.
Here are a few major changes that are planned:
- The coaster builder will be reworked to be a lot simpler, with better controls and more visual helpers. The goal is to help casual players build nice and smooth coasters fast while advanced players will still be able to create near-perfect coasters by importing them from other software or using advanced controls like nodes. The current detailed systems will also be simplified such as special tracks, the goal being to provide pre-made sequences that are easy to edit for casual players, while advanced players will still be able to program their own sequences from scratch.
- The building system will be unified and simplified, Architecture and Scenery pieces will be merged in the same menu, and the Architecture pieces will be heavily simplified, the goal being to have one set of pieces with selectable sizes and materials instead of having 5000 pieces that are copies of each other with different materials.
- The UI and UX are going to be reworked, the UI will receive a fresh new look that will hopefully be easier on the eye, with a better font for reading. As for the UX improvements, there will be a lot of controls overhauls, and new camera controls for simulation enthusiasts that are used to "overview" cameras instead of the current first person camera.
This extenstion of the target audience is also to keep up with competition, the goal being to provide an alternative to popular games of the genre, with more customization, more realism, and more in-depth features for both casual and advanced players.
3. The Park Studio Experimental Branch.
An Experimental branch for Park Studio will soon be available for free on Steam, this Experimental branch will be updated each time a new system is done.
Saving in that branch will be disabled, in order to provide Patreon supporters with an advantage since that Experimental branch was previously private.
Patreon advantages will slightly change, you will still be able to access exclusive teasers and development insights and will get access to fully functional Experimental branch updates.
4. The Beta release.
As said previously, the Beta release currently doesn't have a release date, but you can expect it to release in 2025.
This Beta release will also come with a price increase, the game will jump from $14.99 USD to $19.99 USD and will exit Early Access.
After the Beta, only a few major features will be added before the game reaches full release and receives its first DLCs and Free Expansions.
5. Communication improvements
Communication about the development of the project will be improved, information will be provided on every platform and detailed devlogs are going to be created when relevant.