Lay a carpet, fill it with coin-ops, and take a little money a great many times. An arcade earns in bad weather, after dark, and from the guests who are too small for your best rides.
A machine is not a stall - it will not stand on grass. Lay a carpet, then put the machines on it - the photo booth too.
Three patterns, € 100 for a 4 x 4 slab, available from the start. Paint as much floor as you like and the machines snap onto it.
When the weather closes your thrill rides and empties your paths, an arcade is where the park keeps taking money.
No thrill rating, no nerve to lose. The guests who will not go near your coaster will happily feed a cabinet all afternoon.
Every one is priced per go, and you set that price. Some of them give something back in the form of toys.
The backbone of a floor. Five different cabinets so a row of them does not read as one machine repeated, and the cheapest go in the building.
A seat, a wheel and a longer go. Guests sit down to play it, so it holds them longer and earns more per square metre than a stand-up.
Hands a prize over. You set the odds and the quality of what is in the bin, and a winning go really fishes a teddy out of the pile.
Fifteen plush animals in the heap, from a panda to a unicorn. The claw is steered, dropped and closed for real, and the animal it fetches is the one the winner carries round the park. Each one plays its own little tune.
Reels, lights and noise. Pays an arcade token every go and a jackpot of six to twelve when the reels come in - the only source of tokens in the park.
The same bet in a different cabinet, lit like a fish tank. Pays a token a go like its neighbour, so a pair of them fills a prize shop twice as fast.
Two guests, one table, and they arrive together. A machine that seats a pair pulls families off the path in a way a row of cabinets does not.
The busiest thing you can put on a carpet: four guests at once, and the longest go in the arcade.
A pair of pads, and the guests stand on them rather than sit. The most expensive machine to build and the one people watch.
One or two guests squeeze onto the bench, the curtain closes and the flash goes three times - you can see it light up under the curtain. A strip of photos comes out of the slot for each of them, and they are delighted with it. Two friends pay once between them.
The slot machines pay arcade tokens. The prize shop is the only counter in the park that takes them - and it takes nothing else.
Six toys on the shelf and no till. A guest saves up across a whole visit and walks out with the best one they can afford - so what it is worth to you follows from how many slot machines your park has, not from where you put it.
The big one, with the mane. A lucky afternoon.
Every spin on a slot machine pays a token whether it wins or not, and the reels coming in pay six to twelve more. That is deliberate: a guest gets a handful of arcade goes in a whole visit, so a jackpot-only payout would send everybody home empty-handed and leave the prize shop selling nothing.
A token is a claim on a toy, not cash - nobody leaves your arcade richer than they arrived. You paid for the prize when you stocked the shelf; they paid for it a coin at a time at the machine.
Like a balloon or a teddy off the claw, a prize is a keepsake: it survives the next ride, and it keeps lifting its owner's mood for as long as they have it.
The two claw machines are the one place in the game where you decide how often a guest wins - and both extremes cost you.
Tight odds earn more per go and less overall. A guest who watches three people lose in a row walks off, and word gets round. A generous machine costs you a teddy every few plays and keeps a queue on it.
Prize quality is a separate dial. Bigger teddies and plush animals cost you more to stock and are worth more to the guest carrying one - and a large one is nearly half the height of the child holding it, which is exactly what winning should look like from across the park.
The arcade is its own research track, in three tiers, and each tier costs more points than the one before it - 1,250 points multiplied by the tier.
The building itself is free from the start. Carpet, walls and a door are tier 1, so you can lay out an arcade on day one - it simply has nothing in it until you have researched something to stand on the floor.
Rides, shops, the arcade and staff training all draw on the same daily budget of € 4,000, so the machines compete with everything else you want next.
That is free play, where the whole list is reachable. In the campaign each location also caps how far the track goes: air hockey, foosball and the dance machine wait until the fourth, and from there on every machine in the game is researchable.
| Tier | Unlocks | Points |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | All three arcade floors, and the arcade door | free |
| 2 | Arcade cabinet (five liveries), racing cabinet, claw machine, Toy Claw, slot machine, aquarium slots, photo booth | 2,500 |
| 3 | Air hockey, foosball table, dance machine | 3,750 |
Within a tier the order is shuffled per park, so which cabinet arrives first is not the same twice. The prize shop the tokens are spent in is on the Shops track, at tier 3.