The few minigames are good, but doesn't feel right on the DS console due to the DS' graphical limitations.
This game is very different to "Rollercoaster Tycoon" for the PC and "Theme Park" for the DS, whereas those games were focused on the business management; Thrillville is focused on actually playing and having fun, like you have a real portable theme park. This means that you will spend a lot of time walking around your park playing minigames, there is virtually a minigame for everything you do - for training up staff, fixing attractions, cleaning attractions. I read somewhere that there was supposed to be 34 minigames, however I've been playing for 5 days and I've still only encountered about 12 - which is a huge dissapointment as the minigames are the best part of the game. The minigames have difficulty levels (Easy, Medium, Hard and Prestige), you can win prizes from getting high scores and there is a high score table where you can enter your name - this is useful if you want to challenge friends! The minigames themselves are very fun, my favourites are one where you have to put a golf ball into a hole, one where you have to throw darts at balloons to pop them, and one where you have to throw a basketball into a hoop - others include an air hockey game and a colour memory game. All the minigames take advantage of the touch screen which almost makes up for the poorer graphics than that of the PSP version.
Building your parks is very limited, there are only small plots of buildable area spread throughout the park, so you have to choose which attractions you want in each park carefully. You can also place public toilets and food stores to keep your guests happy. There are dozens of different attractions which you unlock as you advance through the game, you can even ride them all with your guests which makes for interesting viewing but IS a bit pointless and watching some will probably make you very dizzy! The roller coaster attractions are built in a whole separate section of your park, building them is quite fun as it takes advantage of the touch screen - you must draw the shape you want your roller coaster track to go in. Although it is still limited to only a few shapes and only about 4 sections of the track can be changed. There are quite a few different roller coaster types to choose from - inverted, wooden, steel, water and more can be unlocked. Riding the roller coasters is fun but there is no 1st person view!
Managing your park is very easy in comparison to games like Roller coaster Tycoon, this is probably so you have time to relax and have fun playing the games and the story. Your guests are hardly ever upset even if you have few toilets or food stores, you can talk to them for suggestions on what to change about your park, but most of this is obvious and can't be changed until more things are unlocked. You can also challenge your guests to random minigames to make them happy.
As mentioned before, the business side is not very detailed; you can hire up to 5 builders, groundskeepers and entertainers per park whom then can be trained up. You can set the price for entry to each attraction, however there is only 3 options (Cheap, Average, Expensive). You can also upgrade your attractions 2 or 3 times to make them more popular. Finally you can win trophies for achieving goals (Happy visitors for x minutes, no broken rides for x minutes, total play time of x minutes).
Unfortunately the game does feel like a lot is missing, you can't do half the things that you can do on the console versions i.e. you can't decorate your park and there are a lot less minigames. And the graphics are a lot worse; everything looks nice but its more more cartoony and pixelated than on the console versions, so you can't fully appreciate your park or the attractions. However the game does the best it can considering the DS' capabilities.
I've heard people say pretty bad things about this game, but I still think it is very good, however I would definately recommend anyone to buy the console version (XBOX360, Wii, PS2) if they have a console.