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Anyone who's played Sim City 2000 knows how engrossing running your own city is. Well, imagine how much more attractive running a theme park must be: not only do you attract paying customers eager for a minor coronary, but you can also charge them ridiculous prices for tatty kitsch and runny ice creams.

This, in a nutshell, is what Theme Park is about. Competing against up to ten other computer-controlled players, your task is to set up the ultimate thrill-laden park, install life-threatening rides, and build shops and fast food joints. Add a few handymen to keep the place tidy, a team of mechanics to service the rides, throw in a lake or two to make the place look nice, and you're ready to open. At this stage, the game is a delight just to look at: the rides whirl manically, each playing its own seductive tune, while the customers mill about in search of excitement.

The key to the game is pleasing these punters. Once they've sampled a couple of rides, they let you know exactly what they think by means of thought bubbles. They might be hungry, desperate for the toilet, tired of walking around or, in the worst possible case, simply bored. You need to be constantly on the look-out for disaffected folk and react accordingly.

As the game progresses and the results of your research appear, you can upgrade the initially suicidal rides to more stable versions, and eventually add state-of-the-art equipment: out goes the pedestrian merry-go-round, to be replaced with a bowel-threatening rollercoaster or racetrack. All of this costs money, of course: money to research new inventions, money to stock your shops, money to buy new rides, money for staff wages, money for rent... Your objective is to make your park pleasant and enjoyable enough to pull in the punters, which then enables you to turn a profit.

The amount of detail crammed into this initially simplistic game is incredible. For instance, placing an ice cream shop next to a ride increases the chances that a queasy customer will lose their lunch after a quick spin. If other similarly stuffed visitors see the vomit, they're likely to chuck up themselves, resulting in what the manual gracefully refers to as a 'chain chunder'. This can get seriously out of hand: employ more handymen to clear up the mess and they end up moaning about wages, which could lead to a strike if you don't come up with a decent settlement. And so on.

At the full simulation level you're constantly assailed with problems: the park layout itself almost becomes secondary as you grapple with orders for French fries, desperately try to make some cash on the stock market and worry about the state of your toilets. You really do need to use every ounce of concentration in this situation, because ignoring even one aspect of the way the park is run soon sends you spiralling into irrecoverable debt, leaving you no choice but to sell up and start all over again with the remaining funds - which means you lose all the research in which you've already invested.

At this level the game is perhaps a bit too complex and clever for its own good - far more so than its nearest competitor, Sim City 2000. There's no point at which you can sit back and watch the park tick over on its own, unless you sacrifice a lot of detail (and addictiveness) by opting for the easier sim levels. Nevertheless there's enough variety and graphical appeal to make the challenge worthwhile. But, as the manual says, just don't expect it to be a walk in the park.