Serving as a ranger in the National Park Service is a rare and highly coveted honor that many of us have surely dreamed about. I know that I have, on occasion, thought about giving it all up and dedicating myself to a career among this nation’s beautiful wilderness, far from the demands of city life and playing the latest indie Metroidvania title of the week. It is because of this fantasy that I know firsthand that becoming a national park ranger is a complicated, hard-to-achieve goal that requires a significant investment of time and a good amount of luck.
For those of us who have given up on that dream but still idly consider it from time to time, there is Ranger’s Path: National Park Simulator, an Early Access title that seeks to fulfill that fantasy with an accurate depiction of working in a national park.
As you might imagine, Ranger’s Path: National Park Simulator is a rather grounded kind of game, focused on realistic depictions of what a National Park Service ranger’s day-to-day job might be. While some elements are gamified to appeal to the player, your time in the game is essentially spent doing what you might expect a ranger to do in a given day.
Mechanically speaking, the game consists of a lot of walking around and doing small tasks to preserve the health of hiking trails throughout the park. You will pick up trash, repair signs, and saw through fallen logs and other trail-blocking debris as it comes up. Each of these tasks is completed by using a different tool in your arsenal and playing small, mechanically different minigames.
More complicated tasks, such as helping locate missing hikers, will occasionally become available to you as either part of the game’s directed missions or as random pop-up events throughout the day. You can also engage in a Papers, Please-esque minigame where you check the day passes of guests you find throughout the park, fining or even banishing anyone with an expired pass or who you find engaging in an activity they should not be.
While there are quite a few tasks to complete, it is essentially up to you to choose which ones you engage in and when, with different jobs becoming available periodically. Each small effort you put into maintaining the park builds up as an XP bar, making it feel like no matter what it is you engage in, you are still doing your job.
Being in Early Access, the game should be expected to come with some small bugs, be lacking in content, or have values that need to be tweaked. Generally speaking, I found myself kind of annoyed at how frequently the game’s litter, busted benches, and other menial tasks reset. It was not long before I realized that the tasks I had just completed moments before were already undone by the game’s simulated campers. While I am sure there is something to be said about the realism factor there, I do not want to have to fix the same bench mere moments after I just fixed it.
I found that the game’s movement systems can be a little unintuitive for a game that requires you to trek up hiking trails and mountainous slopes. You cannot jump, which can occasionally get you in trouble when you get stuck in the terrain, and you seemingly cannot walk up slopes, or at least not many of the sloped hills I personally tried to walk on. I was often met with invisible walls that forced me to stay on the path when I tried to take shortcuts up small, easily walkable hills, which can feel like a problem when your job is to find a missing hiker who could be trapped and desperately in need of help from someone not taking the scenic route.
Running is also on a toggle, which feels awkward to use. Strangely enough, the driving mechanics are much, much better than the walking ones and feel much better to use in the limited space available for you to drive your truck around.
The biggest issue I would say Ranger’s Path: National Park Simulator has is that the game simply does not have a lot to do. Content in this Early Access title is minimal, and what is there is a series of small tasks, occasionally with minigames that can be completed in seconds and quickly become repetitive. What really hooks you is the XP gain system and the immersion that you are actually doing the job of a park ranger somewhere.
That being said, if all you are looking for is to immerse yourself in the fantasy of being a park ranger, then Ranger’s Path: National Park Simulator will probably do it for you. While the game can feel minimal in its current state, it certainly seems to be resonating with players, and it is hard to say there is anything else quite like it on the market. If you are interested in the title and the issues I have brought up in this Early Access review have not turned you away, then I do not see any harm in giving Ranger’s Path: National Park Simulator a try.
For the more skeptical readers, I would suggest giving the game some time to flesh out and waiting for the full launch from Early Access to 1.0. I am personally curious to see how the developers continue to expand upon what the game currently has to offer.
Pros
- Immersive and grounded simulation of park ranger duties
- Variety of small tasks with different tools and mechanics
- Unique premise with little competition in the genre
Cons
- Limited content in Early Access
- Movement mechanics feel clunky and restrictive
- Gameplay quickly becomes repetitive, relying heavily on immersion to keep you invested.
TryHardGuides was provided a Steam code for this PC Early Access Review of Ranger’s Path: National Park Simulator. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page!
Comments