Marine Park Empire E3 2005 Preshow First Look

Marine Park Empire is the follow-up to Enlight's Zoo Empire, and as you can probably guess, this time around you can build and manage the aquatic park of your dreams. Enlight is pretty good at creating economic management games, and earlier Enlight games let you manage a university, a restaurant, and a corporate empire.

The gameplay in Marine Park Tycoon should be familiar if you've played any kind of tycoon-style building game, such as RollerCoaster Tycoon. You get to control every aspect of life in your marine park, from the caring and feeding of the animals to the hiring and managing of the various employees. Your job, of course, is to create the best park possible for your visitors, but you're given a relatively free hand to do what you wish, as long as you stay financially solvent, of course.

There will be plenty of animal life to tend to in the game, as Marine Park will introduce 28 aquatic animals, including otters, orcas, octopuses, and more. On top of that, all the animals from Zoo Empire are being brought into the game, meaning that you have 60 species to play with, and you can create the ultimate zoo and water park. There will be more than 450 unique building and decoration items to play with and more than 150 structures, facilities, and rides.

Enlight also promises a new, streamlined interface that will allow you to manage and run your park with ease, as well as interactive tutorials to get you up to speed quickly. And to tempt you further, Enlight is aiming Marine Park Empire at the budget gamer--the game has a suggested retail price of $20. Marine Park Empire is currently scheduled to ship this summer.