Welcome to your first day as Faremont National Park’s budding new ranger! In Astragon Entertainment and To-Go Games’ Ranger’s Path: National Park Simulator, players take on the everyday responsibilities of a real park ranger in the stunning Faremont National Park. This game adds to the list of the publisher’s list of viral simulation games, which includes Bus Simulator 27, Construction Simulator, and Police Simulator: Patrol Officers. Restore and maintain scenic trails, assist visitors, and document wildlife in a living, breathing ecosystem.
Many common tasks require players to clear blocked paths, collect litter, repair broken signs and occasionally drop everything to respond to urgent wildlife sightings or reports of missing hikers. Each day brings new tasks and surprises, but the game still includes main missions to keep players on a guided path. While games like this often focus on animals, the people are just as important. As a park ranger, players point campers in the right direction, check permits, respond to emergencies and ensure the park remains welcoming and safe.
The overall gameplay loop is simple to understand. Players can explore and repair areas while discovering new trails, animals, plants and landmarks, or they can complete story missions. Completing story missions while picking up “callouts” appears to be the best way to experience everything the game offers. Callouts are repetitive tasks that the player’s boss, Effy, assigns through the radio.
“Players take on the everyday responsibilities of a real park ranger in the stunning Faremont National Park.”
The side missions feel somewhat repetitive, with limited variety during the couple of hours I spent playing. Common tasks include photographing nearby animals, rescuing a lost visitor or helping repair a trail at a specific location. Most of the variety comes from the main story missions. These missions can include tracking down poachers or vandals who are trying to damage the park experience for visitors.
Faremont is massive, with diverse biomes ranging from dense forests and meadows to winding rivers. The ranger pickup truck helps cover long distances along the park’s road network and reach remote areas filled with natural landmarks such as waterfalls, rock formations and scenic viewpoints. Visiting certain landmarks is automatically logged on the player’s map, allowing players to refer back to that information later.
There is a lot of ground to cover while taking on main and side missions. The game provides one ranger truck to travel longer distances. However, I could not find a way to respawn the truck if it did not appear on the map. It is possible there was a bug that should have shown where the truck was left, but I lost it once and spent the rest of the playthrough walking or running everywhere.
“Do not expect the most visually stunning vistas, but you can get the idea of the scenic spots the developers were striving for.”
Like many nature simulator games, wildlife activities are important. Players use a camera to photograph animals and collect information about them. This information can help when interacting with visitors or campers later in the game. Ranger’s Path: National Park Simulator features a solid variety of forest animals, from elusive wolves and majestic eagles to mischievous raccoons. Each species adds life to the park’s ecosystem.
Overall, the game was a nice way to experience the outdoors and get into the life of a park ranger. Even with DLSS upscaling and graphics settings maxed out, I found the game was up to par for an indie title. Nothing spectacular, but nothing atrocious. I would argue that I would have liked to see some of the plants stand out a bit more against the lush greenery in the game’s countless forest or meadow settings.
Astragon Entertainment’s arsenal of simulation games is typically on the more positive side, so I had a lot of trust in checking out Ranger’s Path: National Park Simulator. Knowing this game is in Early Access and priced at a fair $19.99, this was not a terrible park ranger experience. Do not expect the most visually stunning vistas, but you can get the idea of the scenic spots the developers were striving for. Numerous performance and visual improvements need to be made while minimizing detrimental bugs. With a little more polish, this could be the ultimate park ranger simulator.
