Roller coaster and theme park enthusiasts have some options when it comes to building the parks of their dreams on mobile. RollerCaster Tycoon Classic is a pretty faithful recreation of the first two PC games, complete (for better or worse) with decidedly old school graphics. For a more updated spin, Atari has also released RollerCoaster Tycoon Touch, designed to marry some of the original gameplay with modern systems.
It succeeds for the most part, at least in the sense that you feel like you are building an amusement park and catering to the guests’ desires while watching the bottom line. The graphics got a big kick in the pants, and there’s no question that it is very much “of the moment” in the way that it manages your time and gameplay sessions.
Feb 28, 2017 You can be the judge when it comes to the merits of those changes. What we’re here to do is provide some RollerCoaster Tycoon Touch Tips, Cheats and Strategies to help maximize your park.
You can be the judge when it comes to the merits of those changes. What we’re here to do is provide some RollerCoaster Tycoon Touch Tips, Cheats and Strategies to help maximize your park-building acumen and make the cryogenically preserved body of Walt Disney blue with envy at your vision (blue instead of green since he’s frozen). Let’s get our tycoon on.
- Rollercoaster Tycoon, the beloved theme park sim series that started it all. Build, design, ride and manage your very own theme park.
- RollerCoaster Tycoon Classic is a new RCT experience, remastered in 2017 by franchise creator Chris Sawyer to combine the best features from two of the most successful and beloved RCT games in the series' history - RollerCoaster Tycoon and RollerCoaster Tycoon 2.
Bigger is Better
Where the original RollerCoaster Tycoon games generally presented you with scenarios that tested your ability to fulfill certain objectives in a specific amount of time, Touch has no such time constraints. Your goal is simply to have the most impressive park possible, zoning regulations be damned, we assume.
That doesn’t mean you can just build willy-nilly. Just like its predecessors left you at the mercy of your research department when it came to what rides or attractions you could construct next, the gods of randomness are present in the form of card packs. Each time you open a pack, you’ll either get a new card, opening up that item for construction, or cards for rides, stores and scenery you already have. Obtain enough duplicates and you can level up that attraction, increasing its usefulness to your park.
BONUS TIP: You can often build several of the same ride or store if desired. Look at the number on the left-hand side of any card and you’ll see how many copies of that structure you currently have in your park and the maximum number allowed — which can be increased at times by leveling up the card.
The park visitors, or Peeps, can also help guide you in the right direction when it comes to what to build next. If you tap on the smiley (hopefully) icon at the top of the main game screen, you’ll get a graph of the Peeps’ average satisfaction that has three bars: Fun, Food and Hygiene. While everything you build affects these scores in some way, a general way to look at them can be expressed pretty simply:
- If your Fun is low, build more rides.
- If your Food is low, build more restaurants.
- If your Hygiene is low, build more bathrooms — and if you’re maxed out on those, you might want to consider leveling up cards specifically to lower their Nausea ratings since that helps keep Hygiene high.
BONUS TIP: While you’re going big, you’re eventually going to run out of space. Starting at level 10, you can purchase park expansions off on the perimeters of your land just by tapping on them and paying the (fairly significant) amount of coins. A new expansion will open up for you every few levels.
Coins are Key
There’s no overstating how important coins are to RollerCoaster Tycoon Touch. Literally everything you want to do requires coins, and you don’t earn them all that quickly in the early stages of the game.
To build a new ride or attraction or lay down a new piece of scenery, you need not only the proper card but also the required number of coins. The same is true when you’re looking to upgrade anything. You’re going to run out of coins and find yourself unable to do anything at times. It’s just the reality of life as a tycoon.
There are some ways you can earn coins faster. Everything in the park, from the front gate to the shops (not bathrooms, though if memory serves you could charge guests to use them in the original RollerCoaster Tycoon games) has an adjustable ticket price for the Peeps. Just tap on an attraction and then tap on the price tag icon and you can use the slider to set the current price. Pay heed to the feedback about whether peeps find it to be too expensive. A good rule of thumb is to set it as high as possible while still falling in the ‘Good Value’ range.
Since this is a free-to-play game, you can also buy coins. Just tap on your coin balance at the top of the screen and you’ll see your options, and as with most F2P titles, it’s probably a smart move to wait for a special offer if you’re going to take the paid plunge.
BONUS TIP: Real life logic applies to what Peeps are willing to pay just to set foot in your theme park masterpiece. As you add more attractions, you’ll find that the Park Entrance price can be adjusted upward without it having a negative effect on guests’ attitudes — and you definitely should whenever possible.
Save Your Tickets
Tickets are the premium currency in RollerCoaster Tycoon Touch, and as such, are pretty valuable. You won’t earn them as often or in the same quantities as coins, and they should be carefully stockpiled as a result.
At launch, tickets can be used right away for two purposes: completing missions instantly and buying more packs of cards. The first use is really only something to consider if you desperately need experience points to level up or coins in a hurry, depending on the mission reward in question. More often, you should be saving your tickets for card packs.
Spending 10 tickets on a Folder of Cards is tempting since you can earn that many tickets quickly by turning in missions or knocking out achievements. It’s just that the Binder of Cards is a better value: 38 cards for 35 tickets. That’s the way to go whenever possible.
One extra way to earn tickets is by tapping on the ‘Offers’ button in the store and checking out what Tapjoy has in store. You’ve probably encountered Tapjoy while playing other mobile games, but just in case, it often asks you to spend money on products or services to get some in-game currency in return, so be forewarned.
BONUS TIP: After you’ve played for a while, you’ll unlock the ability to promote your park, driving in more Peeps using the bullhorn icon in the bottom-right corner. For 25 tickets, you can get a 15 percent attendance boost for 12 hours, which isn’t that bad. However, you can also get a 5 percent boost for three hours simply by watching a video. That seems like the better play in most circumstances.
Design Your Own Thrills
One of the cooler features of RollerCoaster Tycoon Touch, even in a relatively limited form, is the ability to design your own roller coasters. It’s not quite as intuitive as constructing and placing everything else in your park, but it does offer you an impressive amount of control given the overall simplicity of the game.
To build a coaster, you’ll first need one of all four kinds of basic cards: station, train, tracks and chain lift. There are seven types of coasters in all, each with their own additional feature cards, but they all share the four basics.
Construction begins by placing the station and making sure you have plenty of room to lay out the track. You can manage the elevation of different parts of the track so that it goes over existing attractions, but until you get the hang of it, the easiest thing to do is to build near the back of your land or in a freshly opened expansion.
Inside the build menu, you lay out track by simply dragging out your finger from the station or the last node. At each node, you have the following options:
- Slide the track around on the X and Y axes.
- Change the elevation of the track, moving it up or down.
- Tilting the track left or right, as you would to bank the turns.
Any or all of those options can be performed at each node. Then you simply build out to the next one. If applicable, you can also tap the ‘Add Special’ icon to throw in a loop, spiral or other fancy track section, though there might be some prerequisites to doing so. For example, you can’t add the ‘Wooden Helix Down’ special card to the wooden coaster unless your track is already high enough off the ground at that node to accommodate it.
Special elements are great for raising the Intensity and Excitement ratings of a coaster, so don’t hesitate to use them when possible. Also, keep in mind that each basic and special card in a coaster can be leveled up separately, giving you some options on how to boost its performance and desirability to the Peeps.
BONUS TIP: Want to build a longer coaster with more nodes and elements? You’ll want to level up the tracks card, as that will give you a length bonus and allow you to add more.
Walkthrough & Strategy Guide
Completing all 21 scenarios in Rollercoaster Tycoon requires serious amounts of practice. This strategy guide offers tips on how to build bowel-shaking rollercoasters, as well as more general hints on the day-to-day management of your would-be Alton Towers. Finally, there's a brief walkthrough of each scenario to put you firmly on the right track. Let's roll...
Building A Successful Rollercoaster
Building intense, exciting, non-nausea-inducing rollercoasters is the Holy Grail of theme park design. To achieve this golden aim you need to learn how to manage G-force.
Finding The G-Spot
While standing motionless, you are experiencing 1G. That means if you weigh 12 stone, you weigh... well, 12 stone. If you add speed and resistance to the equation, such as you dropping 100 feet at 70mph and shooting straight back up into an inverted loop, you are being subjected to a force greater than gravity. In fact you're probably pulling about four vertical Gs, which means you now weigh four times your usual weight. That's some force. And, as you'd expect, it hurts.
Generally speaking, in Rollercoaster Tycoon it's best not to exceed 4G too often -and especially negative Gs, which occur when cars come off a straight section of track and hit a bump at high speed, or plummet down a drop with too much initial velocity, which causes weightlessness. While it's extremely exciting for a brief moment, prolonged experience simply causes your guests to spew. If one of your coasters has a high negative G rating, sort it out immediately.
G-force also works laterally (side to side). (Are you sure about all this? - Science Ed.) If you design a ride that hits about 5G laterally, you're basically snapping necks. Overall, you want to keep your Gs to a level that's reasonably pleasant for people to experience. By all means give the punters a bit of a shock and a thrill, but excessive exposure to high Gs is the wrong way to do it.
Excitement
Exciting rides are not necessarily fast, nor do they have loads of twists, loops and turns. A high rating in the 'exciting' category usually comes from building a ride that goes over water, through tunnels, past themed scenery or close to another attraction. For example, a section that dives into a tunnel after a sharp drop, emerges into bright sunlight, performs a sharp 90-degree banked turn and darts back into the darkness rates highly on the excitement scale, but doesn't make the passengers vomit.
Also, build uphill sections of track so that cars have just enough momentum to get up and over. If passengers think they're not going to make it, and are going to plummet backwards down the track, they become even more excited. Indeed, later add-ons enable you to do just that, but to do it safely. But beware: going too fast backwards is likely to be messy.
To keep the interest factor high on slower sections of track (usually near the end), use banked helix turns. This type of curve maintains speed, and gives the rider the impression of speed.
Intensity
The trick is to study the graph when you first test a ride. Look at the places with high and sudden G-forces, then smooth them out. Inserting banked corners - or, God forbid, even brakes - can usually do this. Above all, make sure the car doesn't come into the station too fast. Coming out of the last turn at 50mph and then suddenly braking to Omph in less than a second is pretty intense; unfortunately it's also the equivalent force of a fatal car accident. Sure, the guests want some intensity in their lives, but giving it to them like that is a sure way to make them leave the park completely -possibly in a body bag.
Nausea
Beginners usually find that most of their rollercoasters have high nausea ratings simply through a lack of understanding of rollercoaster dynamics and physics. Follow the guidelines outlined in the Excitement and Intensity sections above to reduce the nausea rating.
The Price Is Right
Never charge more than Pound-2 for any food or drink item, and try not to go above Pound-1 for a map, and Pound-3 for an umbrella. When it comes to rides, 50p for a gentle ride, Pound-1 for a thrill ride and Pound-2 for rollercoasters, go-carts, and water rides is about right. Try not to charge for the toilets, or transportation rides like the monorail. That's just greedy.
The admission price should start at about Pound-10 and increase gradually from there. Let's say that each attraction (including stalls) is worth Pound-1.50 on the entrance fee. This means that a park with ten attractions should charge Pound-15 quid, Pound-30 for 20 attractions, and so on. Basically you'll know if the price is right anyway, because your punters will no doubt squeal about it if they're unhappy.
Watch the animations of your guests. If they wander up to an attraction and leap backward in surprise with their eyes popping out of their head, something is wrong. Check out the price of your ride and put it right. On the other hand, if people come off a ride and jump with joy, then you know a ride's popular, so maybe jack up the price a little to maximise revenue.
Workforce And Patrol Zones
Always give your workers relatively small patrol zones, otherwise the good-for-nothing slackers just wander about aimlessly, reducing park efficiency. When you employ a handyman, order him not to water the gardens or mow the grass -it's a waste of time. Instead assign him to areas near ride exits, food and drink stalls and litter bins, and get him to sweep the pavement and empty the bins.
Mechanics should be given zones that cover maybe five or six rides. Inspections of the rollercoasters should take place every 20 minutes, and everything else every 30 minutes.
Not all parks need security patrols, but if you do require their services, position them around vandalism hot-spots such as benches and litter bins.
The Scenic Route
Try not to destroy ready-made scenery and themes; guests are absolute suckers for something that looks pretty. Try to add fountains, statues, lamps and other gadgets, which all go towards making a more scenic environment that people are less likely to leave. Most useful of all are themed rollercoasters and other rides. Not only do they look cool, they also actually increase the excitement factor of the ride.
Right On Queue
When you site an attraction, remember to leave enough room for a queuing area. Rollercoasters, go-carts and water-based rides tend to be among the most popular, and so need the longest queuing areas (7-10+ blocks), then it's thrill rides (4-6 blocks), and finally the gentle rides (2-3 blocks).
Even though it's fairly common practice at most real-life theme parks, in Rollercoaster Tycoon you don't actually need to queue at any of the refreshment stalls, so don't bother building queuing areas by them.Another thing: if a ride takes about two minutes, people are going to be queuing for longer than a ride that takes only ten seconds. Think about this and plan appropriately.
Occasionally guests complain about long queues. If this happens you can do one of two things: either extend the station platform (rollercoasters etc), or raise the price of the ride to scare a few people away. On the flip side, if a ride has no queues at all, reduce the price to attract people to it. It's usually the gentler rides that guests start to lose interest in, and if this happens just swallow your pride and keep reducing the price. Don't worry about making a loss, there are
The Path To Success
Pathways obviously enable guests to get from one part of the park to another, but they also serve as viewing platforms. Position your paths so that they meander tantalisingly near rollercoasters and other interesting-looking rides. Put a few benches down as well so that people can gaze at the ride while they eat their pizza or whatever. Dig some tunnels. Do anything humanly possible to make the pathway an attraction in itself.
Marketing Talk
If all else fails you can always spend a bit of extra cash on marketing campaigns, although generally speaking they are most effective at the start and end of a scenario. One cunning tactic you can use if you're short of guests with about six weeks to go is to have a massive blanket advertising campaign and entice revellers that way.
Scenarios In Brief
Because the tactics for the completion of each scenario are essentially the same, here's a quick walkthrough outlining the main points.
Forest Frontiers
Set the park entrance fee at around Pound-15. Go for the 'woodchip' rollercoaster and spread a selection of gentle and thrill rides around it. Employ a mechanic and two handymen to keep things ticking over. Only research ride improvements.
Dynamite Dunes
Increase entrance fee to Pound-20. Build a selection of rides around the initial rollercoaster. Employ four handymen and two mechanics to keep the park in shape. Finally, reduce the ride prices towards the end of the second year, and start some marketing campaigns to attract punters.
Leafy Lake
Build a pre-made rollercoaster near the entrance, and another on the other side of the lake. Pad out the rest of the park with a varied selection of gentle and thrill rides. Security is needed, as well as some handymen and mechanics.
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Diamond Heights
Hire three mechanics, two security guards and about five handymen. Build an information kiosk, food and drink stalls and some toilets near the entrance. Introduce some gentler rides and a few thrill ones. Start a marketing campaign for the new attractions, then sit back.
Evergreen Gardens
Research stalls early so you can get the information kiosk, otherwise your guests will become lost. There's loads of room available, so spread your rides around the park; position them between scenic areas so guests have exciting walks. Build a steam train or monorail to help guests get around the park. Flatten the land, and add minor rides along the existing pathways. When you can, build a wooden rollercoaster somewhere in the middle of the islands. Advertise it and the punters should start flooding in. Raise the admission fee to Pound-20. Create more land. Add new rides.
Katie's Dreamland
Set the admission price at Pound-20 for some quick cash. Get your guests eating food, and hire more mechanics. Raise the price of Runaway Plumber to Pound-3. Research thrill rides and place them in the area just outside the rollercoaster.
Pokey Park
Demolish the Twister in the corner and replace it with a wooden rollercoaster. Raise the admission price Pound-10. Gradually replace all the rides with more exciting ones, and aim for another rollercoaster to finish off.
White Water Park
Research nothing but thrill rides, and add them to the vast array of water-based outings. There's loads of room for expansion, so try to get in a coaster or two. Add two clusters of refreshment stalls - one near the entrance and one near the log flumes.
Millennium Mines
At first the only thing in this massive mine area is the train. Add another station towards the far side of the mines, then start adding a selection of rides around the two stations. Aim for about 30 attractions, and make use of the underground.
Karts & Coasters
One mechanic in this place? That's a joke. Hire another one, and assign them to two rides each for now. Clear away some trees and add some thrill rides -keep this park for the hard-core adrenalin addicts only.
Mel's World
There's nothing really too abnormal about this scenario apart from the vast number of people you have to entice in. Basically, work faster than usual and add a few gentler rides to appeal to families.
Mystic Mountain
Ultimately you want to set up a meaty mine car rollercoaster around the original scenery on the mountain. There's loads of room for park expansion, and this should enable you to create some hugely enjoyable rides.
Pacific Pyramids
Another one to build from scratch, but yet again there's acres of room for expansion. Wrap some tracks around the sphinx for added effect, and also expand upon the existing underground tunnel system.
Crumbly Woods
Not long after you begin, Double Trouble crashes, and soon other rides meet the same fate. Hire an army of mechanics to keep the old attractions going while you build new ones. Add themes wherever possible to attract the 1200 visitors you need.
Paradise Pier
Don't worry about the lack of land, you can build wherever you want. There's loads of space for everything, so go for some huge rollercoasters. Be careful with your money though - building on water is more expensive than building on land.
Lightning Peaks
There's scope for some giant drops and intense underground rides here. Concentrate your attractions around the top of the three peaks and include refreshment stalls and other vital amenities. The main problem here is rain, so build plenty of information kiosks where your visitors can buy umbrellas.
Rainbow Valley
The local authorities won't allow you to demolish trees or change the landscape, so tread carefully. Go underground or high above ground. Alternatively, build in the water - there's enough of it.
ThunderRock
A great place for a mixture of open-air and underground rides. Stick all the thrill and gentle rides around the base and on top of the rock. Build the rollercoasters inside, and clinging to the outside walls.