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In single-player mode, your Uncle Mortimer has decided to let you run his amusement park while he tries to develop an alternative fuel source. He reminds me of Doc from Back to the Future, with the wild white hair and a crazed look as though he’s inhaled too many chemicals. Before you get down to business, you can choose one of twenty characters that are presented, ranging in age and hairstyles. You can customize further by changing up the hair, clothes and color of your skin. After that you’re sent into the park, where you are free to walk around. Although it might be beneficial to hit up the tutorial locations so you get an idea of what you’re supposed to do.

The tutorials are broken down into different sections: games, upkeep, build, guests and business. Your missions are divided into these categories, where you get ranked at the end with a bronze, silver or gold. You start off with one park out of a total of five. As you play more missions, more parks will open up to you. Build missions involve building coasters or other attractions for the park that will bring in more money. You can do so in your management menu, where you can also check on other aspects of the park. This is the part of the game where it’s like a park sim, you’ll actually need to put in a little bit of thought as to what kind of nausea and thrill factor you want on the ride.

Guest missions are interesting at first, but they start to get repetitive after awhile when all you’re doing is just tapping through the dialog trying to up your friendship meter. You want to try and build a good rapport with your guests, find out what they like or dislike and see if they have any good suggestions. You can also play the role of a match-maker and even flirt with the teens. So if you ever need pick up lines…

Games missions involve playing mini-games and you can also play them in party play mode. What’s nice is that the bulk of the mini-games are already available for you to play, with only a handful left that need to be unlocked.

The game runs fairly smoothly, and even though there isn’t a deep story involved, the introduction cut-scene where you meet Uncle Mortimer is nicely done along with the voice acting. It seemed like a clip out of an older Pixar movie. In the game, the character models may not be spectacular, but the animation and the sound are decent. You can find yourself feeling a bit dizzy after a ride. The music is upbeat and lively, creating a warm and fun atmosphere.

The mini-games include an interesting variety of arcade-style games, some are dungeon crawlers, some are racing games and there are several shooters. Doing upkeep missions are also in the form of a mini-game, which makes the task of maintaining your park not so much a chore. This is great for people who don’t want to get involved in to sim-type games that involve managing items that you don’t necessarily want to think about when you play a game. Thrillville takes a different approach and tries to make those usual tedious tasks fun and interactive.

Eventually, after you’ve played enough mini-games, you might find yourself getting tired of doing the same thing again and again. There is a lot of content to Thrillville and a lot of missions to do. Creating your own roller coaster and being able to ride them is always entertaining. It’s a great stepping stone if you’ve never felt the urge to try a sim, since this isn’t exactly classified as a true simulation-type game, it contains certain elements that would remind you of one. If you’re a ride-junkie, Thrillville is a fun alternative for the long winter months where you can’t go on real rides.