Park Beyond’s latest trailer reveals modular building and more ridiculous theme-parkery

S’been a while since we’ve had a proper in-depth theme park sim, hasn’t it? Park Beyond was revealed almost exactly a year ago, when the devs also talked a lot about the concept of “impossification”, but it’s been all quiet on the rollercoaster front since then. Tonight, at the Opening Night Live marking the start of Gamescom, we saw a shiny new trailer showing off some of the building tools and wacky modules you can build into your coasters.

In the trailer you can see modular control of the angle and height of different sections of your rollercoaster track, as well as a look at the canon module and glider (which the devs Limbic Entertainment mentioned before). But there was a glimpse of a kind of pinball plunger that shoots your coaster train backwards down, a splitter that divides the train into its separate karts, and a seesaw section of track. It looks wild, honestly, and I can imagine designing tracks with those in them will get pretty complicated.

Interestingly, it looked like you might be able to do modular building on other things in the park, not just the rollercoasters or bigger rides. The trailer indicates you can build your own weirdo creations out of any different bits from any of the theme sets – slot the roof bit you like best on top of other stacked bits of a building. The one in action looked like a Wild West-themed drinks or souvenir shop, but you could theoretically crown that with a big pink roof from a fantasyland theme and have done with it.

That’s a lot of modularity, in other words, so if you’re the sort of player who loves building everything just so, exactly the way you want it, then Park Beyond might have a lot for you to love. This intrepid reporter will have more to say soon, because she’s had a hands on with a very early playable build.

In the meantime, take a butcher’s of the trailer and wait for more news from Limbic and Bandai Namco – the release date is still just “Coming 2023”, so there’ll be at least one more piece of news on Park Beyond when we get a definite date.

For more Gamescom coverage, be sure to check out our Gamescom 2022 hub for all the latest news, impressions from the show floor and more.