Park Beyond devs talk Patch 2.0, extreme sports DLC, & Mod.io support

Park Beyond is the latest entry into the ranks of the veritable theme park management genre, having launched earlier this year on Xbox Series X|S, PS5, and PC. It was met with decent, if not outstanding reviews from critics who largely felt it had some new ideas but didn’t quite live up to its potential. Developers Limbic Entertainment are already hard at work on improving the experience though, with the recently released Beyond Extreme DLC being the first of many updates to the game. This first expansion added a host of new items, missions, and of course rides that blend contemporary attractions with extreme sports. when it dropped on October 18.

To get the lowdown on this next step in the evolution of Park Beyond, we spoke with Limbic Entertainment producer Marco Huppertz, who talked about positive feedback from the community after Patch 2.0, which rolled out alongside Beyond Extreme.

Getting the lowdown on Beyond Extreme

To get the lowdown on this next step in the evolution of Park Beyond, we spoke with Limbic Entertainment producer Marco Huppertz, who talked about positive feedback from the community after Patch 2.0, which rolled out alongside Beyond Extreme. With Patch 2.0, Limbic addressed many of the community’s concerns with a swathe of bug fixes, balancing tweaks, and quality-of-life improvements, while the Beyond Extreme DLC itself bolstered the game with new content.

Settling on Beyond Extreme’s theme was a simple affair for the team thanks to Blaize — she’s your top supporter and ride master in Park Beyond, and fan of anything that can get her blood pumping with adrenaline. “For the DLC’s narrative, we basically wanted to connect the theme, both to the narrative of course, but especially to Blaize as the character,” Huppertz tells us. “For Beyond Extreme, it was pretty straightforward to settle on this one. But overall, we have a list of themes that are also then being fed by community feedback that we have on our sites and whenever we plan for new content to come into the game.”

Beyond Extreme follows on from the main campaign with two new missions focused on Blaize, and an opportunity she has been offered to create an extreme sports festival, thanks to the success of Cloud Stormer (one of the parks you build in the main game). “Because of her background in extreme sports, we took inspiration from this for the theme that we wanted to extend with Beyond Extreme,” Huppertz said. “If you play the DLC, you will get a bunch of new content to build your own extreme sports event, and combine this with entertainers who are riding on BMX and skateboards and roller skates and doing tricks.”

The DLC comes packed with over 250 new scenery objects, as well as building prefabs, two flat rides, coaster modules, entertainers, and more to use in the two missions or sandbox mode. The two missions themselves, though, also introduce new visitor types into the mix for an extra challenge. In the first mission, Blaize accidentally gets cloned infinitely, filling your park with Blaize visitors looking for a thrill. Your goal is to send the clones back into nonexistence by raising the Euphoria level of your park through Impossified rides. The second mission, however, introduces two new visitor types altogether.

“In the second mission, from the narrative perspective, the players are playing the actual extreme events that Blaize has been preparing. And then there is essentially free entry for the Daredevils, which is one of the new visitor types, and they are basically seeking extreme levels of either euphoria or nausea,” Huppertz explained. “And then there are the so-called Daredabblers, who are the wannabe Daredevils, but the downside is they don’t really take the extreme rides so well. Eventually, the player has to find a balance, but can also choose how many Daredevils are going to come into the park versus how many Daredabblers are going to come into the park during the pitch meeting. Those are mechanics that we didn’t have in the main game and make the new missions special”.

Alongside the new mechanics, we’ve got some gorgeous new scenery as a backdrop too. “The setting, especially in the second part, is quite special because the players play on a mountaintop overlooking the far distance, and it’s really nice to build a park just from a visual perspective there.” explained Huppertz.

As for the rides themselves, Beyond Extreme introduces Park Beyond’s first flying coaster, as well as two brand-new flat rides with similarly extreme Impossifications (the game’s attraction improvement system which lets you add seemingly impossible upgrades as you progress). “There is something special about the train and the cars, because when it leaves the station after the visitors have boarded, the seats fold up so the visitors are put into this flying position where they are not just sitting and hanging down from the coaster, but they’re actually tilted with their heads towards where they are going,” Huppertz tells us. “So that’s the flying coaster, which we thought was also very fitting given that Blaize also has a lot of entries with her jetpack, even in the main game already.”

“For the flat rides, we have one ride where players are basically put into this smaller arena where they are sitting in quads, and then with the Impossification, we put these autonomously driving quads on a halfpipe, which then breaks apart and there is a robot attack. So, we have like quad rides on one side and we have visitors flying around in a jetpack Impossification on the other flat ride,” Huppertz says. “And for the basic theme, we went more into this direction of, I would say trends or former trend sports, like BMX riding and basically when you turn on the X Games, the sports that you see being shown there.”

With the base game already offering Impossified rides that we would class as extreme, we had to wonder if upping the ante for a DLC called “Beyond Extreme” would be difficult to pull off, but Huppertz says that it was a fairly easy process for the team. “I would say that when we design new flat rides or new modules for Park Beyond, there are always ideas available on what we can do with basic versions that exist in real parks. So it wasn’t particularly hard,” Huppertz said. “Actually, what made it easier for us was to have this defined theme of like we wanted to go for this extreme sports event, so we were already looking at flat rides that exist in real life where we could apply this theme on the rides. So, the two flat rides that we introduced with Beyond Extreme were inspired through the theme, so I think it’s definitely a challenge for the artists to come up with new concepts, but we also have a list of rides that we still want to get into the game. We always look for opportunities to put it into new content drops or into new DLC.”

With the rollout of Beyond Extreme and Patch 2.0, Limbic also introduced the ability for players to share parks and prefabricated rides via a partnership with Mod.io — the same system Techland uses to share community-created maps in Dying Light 2 across multiple platforms. Huppertz tells us that Limbic used to rely on social media to see what the community was creating in Park Beyond, but with Mod.io, the team can scroll through everything easily and in one place.

“Now I can just go into the game and see what the community is doing, or on the Mod.io website to see the trending prefabs and parks that players are creating. That’s really cool to see. And I think also a nice addition for the community, because of course, with future themes and future DLCs, future content drops, we are always going to also include prefabs that are made from our side that just come with a theme from the get-go, but then to see what players also do with all of the assets that we give them in the game; that’s just brilliant,” Huppertz says. “There are so many creative people starting to use this toolbox of scenery, objects, and modules that we have in the game and build really, really cool stuff with it.”

With Mod.io support in-game, Limbic also has the advantage of thinking about its future content for Park Beyond and the tools it can give to the community to create its own masterpieces. “The main interest of adding new content is always the combination of possibilities,” Huppertz explains. “That is always in the back of our mind when we go for a theme and think about okay, how can players then combine the assets that we give them? The new scenery and the new modular pieces, how can they combine it with things that are already in the game? And this way, players can then essentially also create their own themes or mashup themes where they start to combine things from the Zombeyond DLC with Western or with Beyond Extreme, and just combine it to their liking.”

The Beyond Extreme DLC is available now on Xbox Series X|S and can be claimed as part of the Annual Pass or for $12.99 / £11.99 / €12.99 from the Xbox Store. Sadly, it doesn’t add any new Park Beyond achievements, but given that only 1% of players on TA have the 100% on the base game, you’ve all still got plenty to unlock as it is. Huppertz is looking forward to seeing what you all create with the new Wind Tunnel and Drop Connector coaster modules, and so are we. Now, go create something extreme for us all to marvel at!