Thrillville Goes Off the Rails
LucasArts, long known both famously – and infamously – for their milking of the Star Wars franchise have more recently been showing signs of a quiet return to their ‘glory days’, when fresh IP was the name of the game and titles like Full Throttle and Monkey Island were thrilling PC adventure fans. While it may not be Monkey Island, Lucas Arts most recent non-Star Wars related franchise, entitled Thrillville is essentially a theme park simulator that – despite the lack of games press interest, managed to do amazing well at the ‘box-office’ in its target demographic. So much so, that they’ve decided to do a follow-up, Thrillville: Off the Rails.
Crash-Tastic
Take a ride on one of your latest creations – or grab a game of air hockey – one of over 30 mini-games that can be placed across your park’s landscape.
At the core of Thrillville is the roller-coaster construction set which has been further simplified in Off the Rails to make it even easier for kids of all ages to take part in designing and customizing their rides. For those to whom the creative juices don’t flow so easily there are many pre-made coasters to choose from as well as a track prediction feature that will attempt to auto-complete your own creations.
To achieve this lofty goal a new type of coaster has been added which falls into the ‘Crash-tastic’ category. These are odd coasters that combine classic non coaster rides into the coaster paradigm- think Whip O’Whirl meets Thunderbolt and you’re headed in the right direction. There are also new ‘Whoa Pieces’ that add a new twist (heh) –like finishing off your coaster ride with some super-air that would make Tony Hawk proud. Don’t worry parents – like the classic G.I. Joe cartoons – your precious little ones will sail safely back to the ground with a parachute. No Flatout or Burnout style wreckage allowed in a family title
It’s My Party and I’ll Mini-Game If I Want To
There are over 30 games packed in and there’s something for everyone from classic 2D racers, to first-person shooters – no, really! Though, no blood and guts here – we’re talking Nerf crossbows and scarecrows. Most of the mini-games encourage co-op or team play and can include up to four players thus helping to minimize down-time for your Mom and Dad. Cause, you know, they’ve got short attention spans.
On PC, Party Play works using game controllers. Player one can use the keyboard if s/he likes, but the game supports up to 4 controllers. We're part of the Games for Windows program, so Xbox 360 controllers are great to use, but the game actually supports a ton of different models on the market. And if players have one that the game doesn't recognize natively, they'll be able to map the buttons themselves.
On DS, we've got 4-player ad hoc wi-fi for the sideshow games (that's anything apart from the staff-training mini-games). For PSP we do also support ad hoc party games, for 2 players only.
Thrillville: Off the Rails will be available on just about every platform known to man so finding a copy for your current system shouldn’t be too difficult. Most notable are the DS and Wii versions which make good use of the platforms respective interfaces and controls allowing for varied styles of play. For example, the Wii version includes a function that takes advantage of the wiimote’s accelerometers letting you twist and turn track sections in the coaster-editor by simply twisting and turning the controller. Many of the mini-games also support play with or without the nunchuk – which is a smart move as not everyone has additional nunchuk’s laying around.
I’ve got an idea – how about throwing in some biker gangs, fast motorcycles, islands and monkeys? 
