Creepy Amusement Park Horror Game "The Park" Gets PS4, Xbox One Release Date

The Park is Funcom's first console release since 2006.

by Eddie Makuch on April 19, 2016

The Park, a new horror game set in a creepy amusement park, will launch on May 3 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, developer Funcom (The Secret World, Age of Conan) has announced. It's notable because The Park represents Funcom's first console release since 2006's Dreamfall: The Longest Journey.

The Park initially debuted on PC in October 2015 in time for Halloween. Funcom was pleased by the success and reaction on PC, saying today the game generated 10 million-plus views on YouTube.

Inspired by first-person exploration games like Gone Home and The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, The Park sees gamers playing as Lorraine, a mother who has lost her son in a eerie amusement park. Losing a child in an amusement park is scary enough by itself, but this is no usual park.

"Amusement parks are happy places, filled with the innocent joys of childhood and the exhilarating rush of hair-raising, but safe adventure," reads another line from the game's description. "Balloons, cotton candy, and fantastic rides to be dared. Perhaps that is how Lorraine pictured it too when she brought her son Callum to one... just before it descended into the most terrifying nightmare of her life."

"Most amusement parks are happy places, but not all of them."

The Park is the result of a new business strategy that Funcom where it will develop "small, experimental, and innovative" games that focus on new concepts and platforms (VR and AR were two examples) and use the company's existing IP. Funcom said it hopes this strategy will help pull it out of the financial trouble it's in as a result of Lego Minifigures Online's poor performance.

Funcom isn't expecting to make much money from The Park. Instead, the developer's main objective with the game's console release is to "acquire knowledge and experience with the processes" related to launching games for PS4 and Xbox One in an effort to reduce risks for the upcoming launch of Conan Exiles, and other games, on console in the future.

The Park sells for $13 on PC, but pricing for the console launch has not been announced.

GameSpot's review of The Park scored it a 7/10.

"Despite its lacking final moments, The Park makes the experience of searching a haunting, abandoned amusement park feel genuinely tense," reviewer Zorine Te said. "This, rather than a specific plot point, is what sticks with you after you turn off the game and return to your normal, less disturbing reality."

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/creepy-amusement-park-horror-game-the-park-gets-ps/1100-6438974/

Personal Note: Survival horror took a back seat last gen.  Good to see it'sbecoming more prevalent.

I really wanted to play the secret world but I don't have enough time to play a full MMO these days. The concepts were just very appealing to me.
They said they wanted to make a console version but it never eventuated. I'll definately check this out just to let them know console people will buy games from them haha.

I'm not a fan of the genre, although the Cradle, the eerie survival horror mission in Thief III, is one of my fav levels of all the games I ever played, but the few I read about this game is making me find it somehow attractive, at that price on PC I could give it a try when I'll find some time.

I played it on PC. I had great expectations for it, but it turned out to be another first person horror game with cheap jumpscares, a very short lenght (less than 2 hours) and a confused plot, what is very cliche for actual horror games.

I finished it but I didn't enjoy it

Bad news, it's so rare to find scary games that rely  more on tension and atmosphere rather than on jumpscares and/or splatter horror.