Overcrowded: Tycoon Guide: Tips, Tricks & Strategies to Maximize Your Profits and Expand Your Theme Park

Theme parks are always a fun and exciting place to be in regardless of your age and games that center around theme parks basically have the same appeal across players of all ages and preferences. This is most especially true if are at the helm of how the design and management of the theme park is concerned. There are potentially as many theme park business sim games on mobile platforms as there are theme parks around the world but no two can be exactly the same as each one is sure to offer something different.

Overcrowded: Tycoon is the latest theme park simulation game from renowned developer, Zeptolab, home to the Cut the Rope series of games, CATS: Crash Arena Turbo Stars, and Bullet Echo, among other hit titles. The game’s title can be a bit puzzling and somewhat hard to relate to a theme park sim game but once you start to dive into Overcrowded: Tycoon, you will quickly understand the “overcrowded” reference as customers continue to pour into your theme park.

Overcrowded: Tycoon shares some of the basic gameplay mechanics common across most idle clicker business sim games like profits continuing to stream in and having zero chances of actually losing. However, the different characteristics that your patrons have and how you should strategize around catering to each one with the different rides and features of your themes park, is certainly a unique and welcomed treat for fans of the genre.

The gameplay mechanics of Overcrowded: Tycoon as well as its user interface are as simple as it comes, ensuring that players can quickly grasp what needs to be done to make progress in their virtual adventure as a theme park tycoon. With the introductory tutorial and tips shown along the way, there is only moving forward towards a bigger theme park however you decide to go about managing it.

If you are all about efficiency as far as growth and development of the theme park is concerned, then we have you covered as our Overcrowded: Tycoon guide covers all you need to know to maximize your profits and expand your theme park!

1. Keep As Little Idle Cash As Possible

Overcrowded: Tycoon, much like conventional idle clicker games, puts very little to no pressure for players to grind for cash. This is considering that profits will always continue to come soon after you open up your theme park. Although basically, your goal is to maximize profits every step of the way, there are really no penalties for any decision you make and net losses as well as closure of your business are impossible, to say the least.

What sets Overcrowded: Tycoon and other idle clicker business sim games apart from most games in other genres is how it suggests its basic currency to be treated. For most games falling within other genres, it becomes only wise to spend currencies prudently, even if you will have more of it later on. As profits in Overcrowded: Tycoon will always be streaming in and that it can only increase in amounts moving forward, what inclines you to actually spend them is to get more of them back.

Although not everything in Overcrowded: Tycoon that you can spend your cash on will directly lead to higher income per se, every bit of upgrade you spend cash on ultimately leads to an increase in profits over time. This is the sole reason why it is best keep as little idle cash as possible. The more you invest in your theme park, the more cash you receive every minute and having as many purchases and upgrades sooner basically exponentially increase your profit hauls for the long run.

Taking the Saturn Jets attraction, which is your first ride, as an example, you will be primarily inclined to consider upgrading the ticket price as doing so will increase earning with every customer that goes for a ride. Upgrading seats, however, will lead to catering to more customers at a time, and ultimately also leads to higher income earned over time.

In the same manner, upgrading queue length preps more customers on the waiting line and almost equates to having more customers as well. Improving speed basically shortens the ride with an intent to cater to more customers faster and generate profits more often.

Beyond these basic upgrade options, the additional ones you can unlock following a ride’s evolution equally yields more profits and merits some cash investments as well. The on-ride photo booth, for starters, is a direct source of extra income. VR glasses also leave a probability of charging extra for some customers as much as the luxury seats do. Finally, there is a premium upgrade option that costs gems and this will increase the amount of time it takes for customers to grow angry.

2. Strategize Around How You Invest Your Earnings

Although we have pretty much established the need for you to rid yourself of cash as much as possible, it should still be noted that you can and should strategize around how you spend your earnings. Income will always be generated and income will increase regardless of however you choose to spend it. However, more strategically considered investments in terms of prioritizing some over others lead to faster increase in earnings over time.

With more and more rides becoming available as you make progress in your theme park tycoon career, and each one having multiple upgrade options, the choice as to how to go about prioritization can be a challenge in itself. The primary two choices for investments would be upgrades versus new attractions or expansions and your choice in this matter should vary depending on the scenario at hand.

If you can readily afford a new expansion or have enough cash on hand to purchase a new attraction, then you should consider going for it. A new attraction should be prioritized over an expansion in the event that both are available and you afford either one. This is because a new attraction will start earning you your investment back as soon as it operates while an expansion will still need an attraction on it to start making money.

If you do not have enough cash to purchase either one but are close enough to earning the needed amount, then you can always continue to spend time on your theme park without spending cash and exercise a bit of patience to reach your target savings. On the other hand, if it will take too long for you to amass the needed amount, then it is best to invest in upgrades instead.

Costs of upgrades for a given attraction will not be as varied and some will start off at a higher cost. Attractions you unlock are expected to be more expensive as well with their upgrade costs made proportional to their value. Each new upgrade will also have higher costs and will basically have the same impact within the same upgrade type.

Considering everything when it comes to choosing from among the numerous upgrade choices, the trick is to go for the cheapest one and end up affording more upgrades with the cash you spent.

There are no milestones set on upgrades made with each of the available attractions in your theme park and this leaves you having more flexibility as far as prioritization is concerned. What you should aim for is to peek into each available upgrade and start investing in the cheapest one across all open attractions.

Alternatively, you can set amount within which you can spend on an upgrade. For example, you can set a max upgrade cost of 6,000 and perform every upgrade available that costs less than 6,000. If you purchase an upgrade and the succeeding one is still within your supposed budget, then you can proceed with the next upgrade, else move on to the next item.

3. Balance Upgrades For Best Customer Experience

Investing in upgrades utilizing the previous strategy aims to maximize the use of your current funds to afford more upgrades and generate higher rates of income by the minute. That is actually a relatively easy strategy to implement and make a habit of. Given that customers that flood into your theme park exhibit different traits, as well as each of your available rides having different kinds of impact on these customers, you should also consider upgrade prioritizations that fit your customers’ current needs.

Each customer can express 1 of 6 different emotions as indicated by the emoticons they show while inside the theme park. You can click on any of them and see the levels of feelings, which can be a mix of different ones. The top 3 icons: Thrills, Fun, and Cute are positive while the bottom 3: Anger, Nausea, and Hunger are negative.

While these are entirely beyond your control after they pass through the theme park’s entrance, your goal is to stimulate more of the positive feelings. A customer’s feelings affect their behavior. More importantly, their emotions influence how much they spend, especially at the gift shop towards the theme park’s exit.

While each ride can increase levels of thrills and fun for each customer, some of the attractions also induce nausea. Likewise, some rides can also lead to a customer being angry. This is usually the result of having to wait longer in line. In this sense, what you hope to achieve with each ride, to avoid having angry patrons, is to ensure that no customer in line needs to wait too long.

Upgrading a ride’s queue length means you get to serve more visitors. For example, though, if you have a queue that can place 11 people in line but your ride only has a maximum of 8 seats, it is highly likely that some customers will have to wait in line longer than others, thus inducing anger. Queues and seats may not necessarily be equal if the speed of the ride is fast enough. Likewise, even if the ride speed is not fully upgraded, spending some gems on pre-show to extend the patron’s patience also works.

When idle, you can spend some time to observe the behavior of your visitors before they hop into one of your attractions and how it impacts them in general afterwards. This will help you decide on how to make adjustments to how you upgrade the rides. If no upgrades are available at the moment, you can always resort to making adjustments to the attractions’ positions inside the theme park.

To do so, simply tap on the attraction and click on the purple icon at the upper right corner of its window. A notification will pop up to confirm if you want to place the ride in your stash and you can deploy it on a different location of your preference.

Shifting the locations of rides are actually a bit of the advanced strategies you will have to consider on the latter part of your theme park tycoon career. It will likely be a more than once activity as well. Keep in mind that placing an attraction in your stash will temporarily halt its income and will impact your total income directly. The sooner you can re-deploy it, the better so be sure to plan ahead before initiating any changes to the theme park’s layout.

Relative to all these upgrade options, be sure to invest earnings as well in the park entrance. Ticket prices are the cheapest upgrades here but both bus size and bus frequency tremendously boost your opportunities for more profits.

4. Deploy Your Mascots Accordingly

Before you even consider moving your attractions around the theme park, there are still some considerable options to look into. Attractions may be the core components of what makes every them park but there are other amenities in Overcrowded: Tycoon that your patrons can enjoy beyond the fun, cute, and thrilling rides.

Mascots are a big part of your theme park in Overcrowded: Tycoon as each one provides buffs that either improve the positive emotions of your visitors and reduce or eliminate their negative feelings. You can access the list of mascots you have unlocked by clicking on the clown icon at the bottom of your screen. You can obtain mascot cards from treasure chests that you obtain when you expand your theme park as well as from the shop.

Mascots have different rarities that not only determine how easy or difficult they are to acquire, but also the efficacy of the buffs that they provide. Common, rare, and epic mascot cards can be earned from the regular chests while event ones are exclusively obtained from special limited events. Regardless of which ones you get from the chest, though, there is every reason to be happy as extra copies of mascot cards are needed to upgrade them.

Beyond seeing how many more cards are needed to take a mascot to the next level, you can check what each mascot can do for your visitors by clicking on their portraits. Mascots typically increase the number of visitors you get with each bus that arrives. Additionally, reducing anger is also a common buff. Increasing fun, thrills, or cuteness levels are the usual third perk. There are unique mascots that simply increase your income, provide random buffs, or even reduce nausea.

Mascots are automatically upgraded once you obtain the necessary number of extra cards to do so. There are no additional costs for upgrading them as well. What is important to consider, as far as strategies go, is where to best deploy each mascot. There are no perfect spots for any of the available mascots you have as your choice of where to deploy them should follow your theme park’s unique needs.

As a beginner, you will have to decide on the layout of your them park first considering the attractions and based on the general behavior of your visitors from the theme park’s entrance down to the exit, you should deploy mascots to improve their positive emotions and eliminate the less desirable ones. If there are any constants with regard to how you should deploy mascot, it should be that they are where visitors pass through.

There will be splits along the path from the entrance to the exit of your theme park. Naturally, the trails of people walking along your theme park will randomly take on different paths as well. These will be prime examples of when you will have to split your mascots accordingly to ensure that as many customers will have an opportunity to receive their buffs.

5. Remember To Invest In Shops And Services

Aside from mascots that players can deploy to give their theme parks a unique ambiance, Overcrowded: Tycoon also provides players with more customizations through shops, services, and even decorations that can be placed within the theme park. Every structure other than attractions and the theme entrance basically belong to one of these extra amenities.

You can click on the “+” icon at the lower right side of the screen to check available decorations, services, and shops that you can purchase and deploy in your theme park. This is the same menu you access to check available attractions but all that excitement early on may lead you to miss the other tabs.

Considering all the different effects rides and mascots have on your visitors, not any of them actually help ease your customer’s hunger levels. Logically enough, though, the only way to ease hunger is for your customers to eat some food. This is reason enough for you to have a need for shops as all shops you can deploy in Overcrowded: Tycoon sell food products.

Just like attractions, shops can also be upgraded. Upgrading food price will increase income generated from each sale although in this instance, profits are the least of your concern considering that you would not want hungry customers in such a rush to leave your park, preventing you from earning profits from them if they opt out of every attraction. Upgrading service rate will have the shop serve the customer faster.

As each shop will have a limited supply of food, upgrading stock is likewise important to have more food inventory. Last but not the least, upgrading restock will have your shop replenish its supply of food items at a faster rate. Keep in mind that any visitor with food will not be allowed to take rides in any of the available attractions and will need a place within the theme park where they can consume the food they bought.

Under the services tab, you can purchase and deploy picnic table in areas where you would want customers to take a break and have their meals. There are toilets you can purchase as well and toilets in Overcrowded: Tycoon actually lessen nausea for customers within its range of effect. There are rest areas where visitors can just relax and barriers that can prevent visitors from straying away from the path you want them to take.

The fan, which is the first service item you get to deploy, actually blows visitors into a path you prefer them to take, effectively controlling their flow much like barriers do. There are plenty of decorations available in Overcrowded: Tycoon as well and while these are largely cosmetic, they can impact your theme park’s performance as well especially in terms of influencing the flow of the visitors.

If you look closely at each shop or service item, you can see a ripple around them, indicating their area of effect much like mascots do. Be sure to maximize these areas of effect and consider it when deploying them. In some cases, what may not entirely appear appealing in terms of design may be the more efficient way of utilizing both mascots and amenities. Note as well that upgrades on amenities apply to each one of the same kind deployed.

6. Use Reports And Trophies As Guides For Progression

Observing the mob of visitors inside your theme park and making adjustments as well as improvements to the attractions and other amenities your theme park offers can always lead to raking in more income by the second. For active players who want to spend time just glaring at what they created, there are even “like” icons atop some visitors that you can click on for extra cash.

If, considering everything, you still want to find ways on how to improve park operations and management, then you should check out the Park Report and Trophies through its icon at the bottom of the screen.

The Park Report provides helpful statistical data on your income every minute, detailing where your income comes from. It also tallies the general satisfaction rating of your park based on the behavior of visitors that come and go. For guidance, you can check which from among your available attractions are reeling in the most profits to help you improve the performance of the other ones. Profitability can also be checked across every shop that you built.

Under the Trophies tab, there are actual trophies you can earn based on accomplishment milestones across different aspects of managing the theme park. Beyond being mere symbols of achievements, the trophies actually carry buffs with it that increase profits or improve behavior of patrons.

Once a trophy has been unlocked, you can set them down on the theme park and start reaping extra benefits from them. Note that while some trophies provide buffs regardless of where you place them, some have limited areas of effect.

7. Take Advantage Of Freebies And Ad Boosts

Considering everything we have tackled so far, it is fairly easy to realize that you can quickly make progress in your theme park management career in Overcrowded: Tycoon most especially if you play actively and if you employ each of the tips and strategies we discussed above.

Beyond all that, however, Overcrowded: Tycoon provides a plethora of freebies you can earn either instantly or after playing ad boosts. In any case, taking advantage of all these optional perks will greatly speed up your progress in your adventure so be sure to not miss out on any of it.

One of the early features you get to unlock is the wishing well. The wishing well basically earns coins over time as visitors make a wish on it, earning you idle income even if you are offline and away from the game. You should consider investing upgrades in it since each upgrade increases its earnings by 5. The wishing well, however, can only accumulate income for a maximum of an hour and extending it beyond that costs real money.

When you jump back in on Overcrowded: Tycoon after going offline, you can readily claim up to an hour’s worth of earnings on the welcome screen. You can choose to play a short video ad to claim 2x as much cash. This is an important ad boost to take advantage of regardless of how much cash you currently have considering you will always have a lot of need for it.

You probably won’t be inclined to visit the shop often if you do not have enough gems to purchase anything but you can actually grab 2 free standard chests from it every 8 hours. The first one you unlock can immediately be opened while you will need to play a 15-second ad boost to claim the seconds one.

There are income boosters you can activate as well via the Fireworks Festival. Activating this requires playing a short video ad but you can invest in upgrading it so that fireworks will continue to play longer. After the boost expires, there is a 6 hour cool down period.

The stage at the center of your theme park is not just another amenity for your patrons. Clicking on it reveals extra rewards for you to claim. There are 5 rewards to claim within 8 hours and the first one can instantly be obtained. For the latter 4, though, you will need to play an ad boost for each one. Huge amounts of coins, gems, and even standard chests can be claimed here so be sure to nab all 5 rewards before the reset.

Beyond having attractions that have rarity grades, making some cards more challenging to obtain than others, Overcrowded: Tycoon holds a few more attractions that you will not be able to obtain from the magic chests.

A couple of attractions are available only through special events and the star-marked lawns are for attractions you can only obtain by spending real money. There is one attraction you can get for free. The Shark Attack can be unlocked if you send an invite to a friend through social channels. Even better, you can invite multiple friends to obtain extra cards for it to evolve it to the next star grade.

Finally, setting up or upgrading new attractions take time to complete. Depending on the rarity of the ride or the level of the upgrade, it can take as long as 6 hours for the attraction to be ready. The waiting time, however, can be reduced by 30 minutes for each ad you play although in some cases, you will only be able to watch enough video ads to a point where a waiting period will still remain.

There are unique special events as well as other upcoming content in Overcrowded: Tycoon that we did not fully touched on in our guide but we are confident that the simple tips and strategies we shared applies to all the potential challenges you may encounter in your virtual career as a theme park tycoon.

Again, while Overcrowded: Tycoon is a casual game where progression can be earned regardless of how little free time you have to spend on it, actively managing your theme park’s operations contribute greatly to how fast you can grow and expand it. If you have enjoyed this guide as well as the game itself and want to share your experiences as well as other helpful tips and strategies, do not hesitate to do so and drop one or a couple down in the comment box!