A beginners' guide to freemium Theme Park-esque build-'em-up Happy Park

The App Store is littered with titles that allow you to run your own farm, manage a zoo, and call the shots in a cafe, but it's a little light on theme park build-'em-ups.

Happy Park is reminiscent of Bullfrog's 1994 hit Theme Park, which sees you cramming a vast empty space full of attractions, food outlets, and decorations.

As in Theme Park, your aim is to transform a modest fairground into a bustling moneymaker, but that's not as simple as it sounds.

This guide will run you through the basics of Happy Park, offer a touch of advice when it comes to spending that hard-earned cash, and hopefully get you off to a flying start.

The Basics

Throughout the game you'll be aiming to increase your experience points, your population, your population cap, and your currency, so it's important that you have a good grasp of each.

Happy Park contains two forms of currency - your standard easy-to-earn coins, and your premium currency, bucks.

The former are used to purchase a whole range of rides, mascots, and decorations, with the latter used to purchase special items and to speed up park processes.

You can buy bundles of both currency through in-app purchases, or grab some free donations for watching select videos and 'liking' TapJoy on Facebook.

The other thing to keep your eye on is your population, which falls into two categories - Population and Population Cap.

Your Population Cap - which can be increased by purchasing mascots and other items - is the maximum number of punters you can have in your theme park. Your Population is the current number of visitors.

Finally, experience points are gained as you purchase attractions and other goodies, and are also earned from collecting revenue from your rides.

They enable you to level-up and unlock new items.

Attractions, food outlets, decorations

When it comes to filling your park you have several different options - attractions, fun buildings, food shops, facilities, and accessories.

Although the majority of rides are automatic, some do require you to 'run' them by simply tapping on them and selecting the desired length of the ride.

The longer the ride the greater the revenue, but be sure to collect your pay-out in a timely fashion or you'll lose it completely.

If you choose a ride length of 30 minutes, try to return within 30 minutes of its completion to be safe.

Each of your attractions can be upgraded a maximum of four times, with each level increasing the amount of revenue you earn at each interval.

If you're running out of park space and you can't afford to expand your patch of land you should focus on upgrading your current batch of attractions.

Fun buildings act in a similar way to attractions, giving coins and experience at regular intervals. These cost premium bucks to purchase, but gift large quantities of revenue.

Accessories and food shops both increase your population cap but don't make you any money, with facilities gifting experience points on purchase.

As they don't make you any money, it's probably best to avoid splashing the cash on these items unless you really need to.

Also, be careful what you buy. Although you have the ability to resell your items, you'll find that they've significantly decreased in value since you bought them.

Finally, your park is only big enough to house a limited number of rides, so you should expand your land at least a couple of times when you have the chance.

Remember: when you do expand it's wise to restructure your park and move your rides around to maximise the new space.

Quests

Quests are another great way to get your hands on some experience points, coins, bucks, and special badges that allow you to purchase exclusive attractions.

Quests range from simple acts such as building a specific ride to levelling-up, or 'running' a ride a certain number of times. You can check out your active quests by tapping the 'quests' button in the bottom-left of the screen.

Keep these in mind, but don't worry about them too much - you'll often unlock them by accident through general play.

Some quests will ask you to build an expensive attraction, but will only reward you with a small number of coins. Obviously, you'll want to avoid these early on in the game.

As you increase the number of rides in your theme park you'll be required to hire some staff.

If you need to, you'll be prompted by a pop-up menu so you don't have to worry about this too much. Just keep some spare coins lying around in case you're ever put in that position.

Mascots are cute and cuddly critters that greatly increase your population cap. Unfortunately, they're also pretty expensive (sometimes costing bucks).

Use accessories and food outlets to boost your cap in the early stages of the game, and hire mascots when you have a decent cash flow.

If you do have some bucks at your disposal, you could spend them on a lot worse.

Marketing allows you to increase your current population with a series of billboard campaigns, internet ads, and TV commercials.

You'll have to shell out a hefty sum of money - 2,000 coins for the billboard campaign - but you'll also gain a big boost in spectators.

You can use a marketing campaign as many times as you see fit.

Other tips

Your punters will often drop litter around your theme park which you can pick up simply by tapping on it. You'll earn a (very) small bundle of coins for a second or two of work.

Paths are expensive to build and completely useless, so avoid them until you have a steady income. Your visitors will happily muddy their shoes walking around on the grass.

Finally, adding your buddies from Facebook and Twitter can earn you some extra bucks, so it pays off to spam your friends' social networks.

Just don't tell them that we said so.