Roller Coaster Mania
Description official descriptions
Roller Coaster Mania is a single player, mouse controlled game in which the player builds and rides roller coasters.
Navigation through the game is mouse controlled and is greatly simplified. The main menu, for example has just three icons, build a roller coaster; ride a pre-made roller coaster; and exit to windows. The build screen is equally simple with three panels in which the player chooses one of the five locations, one of the three styles of coaster each of which has four styles of carriage .
When building a coaster the player selects a track section from the menu and places it onto the active end of the build with the mouse. The game automatically adjusts the pieces of track available depending on the piece that was previously laid and the terrain. Sometimes the player will find that the game offers no track pieces at all, this is usually because the track is about to go through landscape, another section of track, or because the terrain makes it impossible to position the track supports.
Once a circuit is complete a menu pops up with the options to save the track, test it and to ride it.
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Average score: 2.6 out of 5 (based on 1 ratings)
Gets harder the more you try to do
The Good
The game has been designed to be simple to use. The tracks are colourful and simple layouts can be constructed easily. Though it gets harder as more ambitious the layout design s are attempted the areas of terrain that are available seem vast. I spent a long time constructing a layout and I didn't come close to filling the available space.
The music is good, listenable and suits the game well, it's nothing that I would want to listen to on my ipod but it's good enough and when playing this game I didn't turn it off.
The Bad
This looks like a very simple game. There are only a few big brightly coloured controls, when building the game only offers the player track they can actually use, but all of this is deceptive.
Yes, simple layouts can be constructed and tested within five to ten minutes but problems arise with anything that is complex and asymmetrical. It is immensely frustrating to spend a lot of time constructing a layout only to find that when you come to complete it the track ends don't line up. What do you do then? There is no 'auto-connect' option to bridge the gap, all the player can do is to keep deleting pieces of track and trying, and re-trying, to rebuild the last section until it reaches the station house in line with the existing track.
So you build a simple track, it looks OK and you test it, and there's a problem, on my circuit the carriage could not travel up the gradient part way around the course, how do you fix it? Well that's not so easy either. The game only allows track to be added at the 'active end'. Sections in the middle of the track cannot be deleted and replaced so the only way to modify a track is to start deleting track from the end right back to the point where an extra curve, or in my case where another powered section was needed, change the track, and then rebuild it.
Another irritating feature of track building is the game only offering the track sections that the player can use next. This also becomes irritating very quickly, for example when making a curved section the player lays the first piece and then goes to the menu bar to select the same section again only to find that either it isn't there or it's position in the selection bar has changed.
Changing the player's point of view is also a bit tricky. There are three buttons over in the lower left of the screen, the player clicks on one to change their horizontal viewpoint and, when the mouse is moved the point of view moves in the horizontal plane. There are similar buttons that control rotation and vertical movement but each has to be done separately. While this is adequate it feels clumsy and unnecessarily complicated.
The Bottom Line
Easy to construct small layouts, much harder to design larger ones.
The control system can be frustrating and actually hinders track building, which is the heart of the game, making it a a less than enjoyable experience.
Windows · by piltdown_man (232824) · 2015
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Game added by piltdown_man.
Game added March 30, 2015. Last modified February 22, 2023.