Running the Show in Thrillville: Off the Rails

Published November 9, 2007

Thrillville™: Off the Rails™ for Xbox 360® plants you firmly in charge of a series of thematic amusement parks. It's up to you to build, run, and maintain each theme-based park, but also to market your attractions, make friends with your customers, and even play through the rides and games yourself. Plus, you need to design thrilling roller coasters, racing tracks, and much more.

Hint: there's an achievement there somewhere.

With so many varied responsibilities, time management and quick thinking are of the utmost importance, but fear not, we've compiled several tips and strategies to help get you up and running in a hurry.

Time to Think
Time management is the most important element to your theme park's success, and with so many options, it's easy to become overwhelmed with all the available choices. You don't want unhappy customers wandering about, unable to find what they need. If not sure where to head next, hit Start to pause the game and give yourself time to think and organize your thoughts. Don't just hit X to gain time. Hitting X brings up the command menu, but your park will continue to operate in real time as you navigate the menus.

Read the Need
Not only should you keep up with general needs of your crowd at large, but make sure to take a good look at the Needs option in the chat menu whenever you're talking to a customer. This provides the clues you need to strike up a successful conversation and win your customer over as a friend. For example, if the customer likes mild rides, you don't want to boast about your wilder attractions.

Color design is up to you.

High Maintenance
Your first few minutes in Thrillville (after the tutorials) should be spent training and hiring staff members to help create a clean, well-maintained, and festive atmosphere. Your employees go a very long way to determining customer satisfaction, so don't skimp. As a general rule, make sure you hire three of every staff type at the outset (entertainer, groundskeeper, mechanic) and train every one of them.

It's always a good idea to go one step further than necessary when staffing your park. That way, when you add new stalls, games, and rides, trained staff are on hand to keep up with the workload.

Happiness=Profit
When your amusement park is packed to capacity with happy customers, it's time to take advantage of their contentment and increase prices across the board. While you shouldn't go crazy, rest assured that satisfied customers are willing to pay at least a dollar more for a good product.

Increase the price relative to the attraction or stall in question. For example, you can probably get away with tacking on an extra two dollars for a game of miniature golf, but for your soda stand, a fifty cent raise is more logical.

Mission Time
While freelancing on ride additions and general improvements can certainly work, the available missions highlight the real needs of your park. And successful missions unlock new content, including gifts to pass on to customers to keep them happy. Missions also represent the fastest way to collect Thrill Points to level up and gain access to new parks.

Get creative with your own 'coaster design.

Theme Parks
It's important to stay consistent with the theme for each park. For example, don't fill up the Thrillville Stunts park with mild, well, non-thrilling rides and kiddy-colored stalls. You'll just end up confusing your customers.

By the same token, it's important to market your park to the appropriate audience. The Thrillville Explorers park lends itself to the more relaxed, adult-oriented crowd. Therefore, a few months of advertisement in Which Mansion magazine will go a long way to attracting the right kind of crowd.

Maps and Exploration
Using the map to zip quickly between customers, staff members, and the various attractions is a great way to manage your time, and you should use it often. However, hidden among the nooks and crannies of each of your vast amusement parks are all manner of secret items that both unlock items and help you complete missions.

For instance, in order to complete a Guest-based mission, you will need to track down all six anti-Thrillville Stunts leaflets. It's worth the time to wander through every section of your park. Exploration time is also a great opportunity to chat up your customers.

Build, Play, Trick Out
Thrill Points are earned every time you build a new attraction, but don't just stop there. Every time you build something new, take the time to experience the ride or game, and "trick out" the attraction with a unique theme such as space, western, or adventure. You'll earn Thrill Points for each action, and, depending on the activity, you may even earn achievements to boost your Gamerscore.

Achievement Simplicity
Speaking of achievements, Thrillville's are wildly varied, spanning the whole scope of the game, but for all that, their descriptions (for the most part) spell out in exacting detail what you must do to unlock them. If you're looking to bolster your Gamerscore in a hurry, read through several of the descriptions (the mini-game based achievements are especially quick) and focus on those goals exclusively.

That's it for now. This should get your park up and running. Keep your eye on the goal and talk to your customers. Hope your park is a success.

Article by Ryan Treit