RCT Discussion / RCT Advent Calendar 2025

Was great to have this again this year, so much fun looking through these, glad I got to contribute too. Thanks for running this!

I'll get around to reviewing these, or at least looking at the last few, but I just wanted to leave a comment thanking you V1 for running this event! I got pretty sick this December, so while bed-ridden, this gave me something actually joyful to do. I had fun Christmas-ing up Antwerp (thanks Ballpit for compressing that Nat Cole King song, you're the best).

Final Results

 

 

Above, you can see the final result of this years Advent Calendar. Again, a specials thanks to Roomie, Bluetiful_Monday, Gustav Goblin and especially Lurker for building more than one entry each. Without you, this literally wouldn't have been possible.

 

And now we come to the sad part of all of this: After more than a decade on the site I will be leaving the community. As you all know I was banned earlier in the year and while I have been reinstated to the site, my ban on discord remains intact. While the admins didn't make it impossible for me to return, they made it very clear to me that I am no longer welcome on the Discord. I will go no deeper than that and the admins might have a different view on things, but that is how I felt. I also can't really say that I blame them. They did their best to make me consider staying just on the site, but my attempts at building in the last month and this event has shown me how hollow of an existance it is, considering most of the activity is on the discord. I'm not sure if the calendar was discussed at all on the discord, but it felt there was not much activity on here and there was more activity on the discord last year. I also found building basically impossible, being completely cut off from the community.

 

I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has maybe overlooked my slights and failings and tried to see me in the best light. I also want to thank everyone who has forgiven me, even if I might not have deserved it. I want to apologize to everyone who felt hurt by something I said. Although I maybe never made it clear, I never said anything with the intention of actually hurting anyone beyond the argument at hand and I am sorry if I sometimes shot over that goal. I want to especially say sorry to Hydro, who I said something nasty towards. I wasn't fully aware of the implications of what I said back then, but the admins made it clear that there was some deeper issue that I accidentially brought into a pretty pointless arguement.

 

It breaks my heart to leave the community at all, and I hope at least some of you will be able to keep positive memories of me. I might return next year for the advent calendar but wit hthe situation as untenable as it is right now, I will not be able to return to the community. I will still receive PMs in here over my mails and for some time I am still in CP6's Discord, so if anyone wants to contact me about anything, feel free to do so. Otherwise, thanks for all the fun and the arguments and the controversies and have a great 2026.

Thanks Version1 for organizing this! It was very fun (and a bit scary) to participate and see so many other cool entries. Definitely helped getting into the christmas spirit for me I have only joined recently and do not know you or your history here very well, but my experience has been positive in your advent calendar - I hope you can keep enjoying the game and (part of) the community one way or another!

And it is revealed! Big props to BallpitWarrior, Bluetiful_Monday, Xophe and ESPECIALLY hypnopompia for having my favorite doors of this year's Advent Calendar. I had no idea hypnopompia was this strong with CSO already, even despite a strong showing in round 2 of TTA. Also Lasketchup genuinely fooling me into thinking he was Babar Tapie shows incredible potential. To all of you I mentioned, PLEASE keep building. You guys are amazing. To everyone else who entered, also please keep building. RCT is so cool dude.

 

And to Version1, this was a hell of a send-off gift. I hope wherever you go you find peace. Keep on working on yourself and find your tribe. It's always an uphill battle.

 

Now that the builders are revealed, it's time for some director's commentary!
 

 

Sundial Springs

 

The theme of sundials and the passage of time came from a very simple yet monstrous ambition. My first idea for the Advent Calendar was based on a movie my parents usually watch on Thanksgiving, but I didn't have the ideas or drive and it went under. A shame because it had some cool aesthetic tricks and a cutting-edge yet distinctly Gustav shoestring I'd love to reuse. Already in December with door after door opening, I figured the best choice of action was to make an entire park in a single day.

 

I had a plan too! I would use Loopy Landscapes to limit my choices of scenery and focus more on planning and less on detailing. I would not use any building hacks or trainers except to renew rides, water flowers, and change the size of the land tool. I also opted to go peepless and focus on macroing out a more semi-realistic park than forcing myself to work with single-wide paths and making everything peepable. Why an entire park? I have no idea, although I think it's for the better as I will soon describe.

 

I wanted to devote the entire process to Saturday, December 6th, but I got so excited to start that I began the night before. I was really excited for the lake that looked like a sundial (with the rock pointing towards Noonton) and the peeps walking clockwise through each time of day. By midnight, I had cheffed up an entrance and plotted the area for the lake. The entrance gates were going to be past the plaza with the giant sundial at first, but with my limited map size I decided to push the entrance gates back and have the plaza branch out into the main paths.

 

 

Unfortunately I underestimated my building speed and focus as well as how annoying it is to build in LL even without hacks. One and a half days quickly became two and a half. By the end of the weekend, I had mostly finished Mount Morne and gotten High Noon and Wild Horses in place. Still extremely impressive for my slow ass, but not what I wanted. If I had decided to go for a Design, I probably would have finished by the weekend.

 

 

Nonetheless, I was having a lot of fun and wanted to continue, so I did. Unfortunately having a full-time job, even a remote one, takes a lot of time and energy out of your day. The goal was now to finish a park in a week, which ended up being kinda sorta doable as I finished on Saturday morning. Sera Shores was done in the last 24-ish hours and was very very rushed, but I absolutely love how it turned out in retrospect.

 

Even if my initial review was a bluff, it's not completely false. The little tricks I pointed out were ones I really wanted to try out or found myself impressed by. I got the idea for the iron roof for tilled soil from one of Lurker's building challenge entries where he used a similar looking land surface from Locomotion. I also wanted to channel the time of day in each area through visual and color motifs. Hazy pastels for Mount Morne, multicolored buildings and warm colors in Sera Shores, deliberately darker paths and walls with bright accents in Nochtenburg, and bro IDK the coaster is called High Noon let's just do a normal Western area.

 

I approached this one like half a semi-realistic park and half a scenario playthrough with a carefree attitude. I took a few cues from CP6's YouTube videos and tried to channel the Fundamental Forest ruleset, albeit contrary to my builder bluff I am no SSSammy. I also tried to focus on weenies and sightlines, such as having the drop tower and biggest coaster at the back of the map. One touch I really like is how Crescent looks like a crescent moon from the entrance and riverwalk.

 

There was a lot of on-the-fly thinking, ideation, and cutting. For instance, Mount Morne didn't come easy despite being the first area I built and I ended up using some LL-style building tests I did in Open as a reference. Bits like a dark ride tunneling through hoodoos in Noonton, a moon bridge using vertical drop track for the reflection in Nochtenburg and a Lilliput-themed kiddie area where everything is tiny didn't make the cut. I also realized after finishing I could have done a medieval area in place of Nochtenburg for the knight/night pun, but I think having an area that just diegetically feels like a night in the city was the right move.

 

While it took longer than I anticipated, I think Sundial Springs was worth it. I'm so happy I just sat down and made a park. My ass is out here making goofy little dioramas and entering building challenges and going for weird ass concepts and forcing myself to be a permanent supporting player and never finishing anything over 200 tiles. Making a hackless LL park to practice my fundamentals has been on the docket since Head-2-Head Classic, but even back then my attempts would just result in too much yapping and posting unfinished screenshots and ending up with an entrance at best. This was the perfect environment for me to just make a little park under wraps and understand the process a little more. I also got to understand my strengths and weaknesses with a more traditional park. For instance, I felt surprisingly confident planning everything out but I also think my queues aren't interesting and need a lot of work. All in all, I think having a solo park to my name and hopefully a Bronze or Silver is a more lucrative investment to get out of this event than a little diorama.

 

In retrospect, if I really wanted to make a park in a day I would have done a LL-style park in Open. It is so much faster and easier to just copy and paste four ghost train pieces with SM and instantly give a 2x2 building windows than have to build all that track. It's still something I really want to try, maybe for a future DKMP contest. Can't say I'm mad doing another RCT1 park though! LLLL!

 

 

chAsiNg aFteR yOu

 

Nice review Gustav. Uwow guys, Hex is such a good J K/Hoob impersonator! Come on, y'all had to know it was me. I wasn't sure if we were gonna hit 24 entries so I whipped this up dangerously close to the end. I mean while V1 was waking up on the 24th. I kinda regret it now since we did end up with 24 and it cut into my time- spoiler alert- helping finish off a TTA entry. Sorry partner!

 

This was a fun little exercise in using some of the new objects from H2HX and working on my detailing after spending a week in LL land. J K and deanosrs were my big influences on the main angle with the interiors. I had a little area of the map I called Gustav's Fun Corner where I'd find cool objects and chuck them off to the side for later use. AmusementParker, Alex and Iretont did most of the heavy lifting here. I was particularly inspired by the way BallpitWarrior used Alex's light objects in his Polar Express entry. This one has more of a backstory and theme than just being cool surreal atmospheric stuff, but it's really hard and stupid to explain and it kills all the aura. Real ones will get it I guess.

 

Since it's not uploaded to the site yet, I'll unwrap my gift to you all and show you the other angles in this little micro! Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays NE!

 

 

V1, you did a great job running this! I waited until now to look at all the entries, and I've been writing down thoughts for every entry. There's a few left and I need to go, but I may as well post my top 5.

 

 

Door 9: Winter over the Garden Wall: very impressed with this, Lasketchup. Good autumn foliage, excellent sculptures (the werewolf!!), good rides as they all serve a purpose. Good detailing on the log flume. Interesting shift of foliage around the wooden coaster, why? Perhaps this super high contrast winter foliage is more interesting to look at than the well done but familiar autumn foliage. I think you could’ve gone with either here, but perhaps not both. The snow objects here are also misplaced. But my gripes mostly end here. This is very well put together and fun to look at!

 

Door 7: Century of Progress: I actually missed the original release for this, so this feels very fresh to me. Looking at the original’s aerial to the side for comparison, I think that this is an upgrade! Like with Antwerp the snow is a bit hard on the eyes, especially with the falling snow overlaid, but the extreme maximalism has become a trademark of yours, and it invites me to zoom in closer to reveal all the detail beneath the snow. I actually love finding the differences between the two maps. I think we’ve had spot the differences minigames in the past (in screenshot form), this makes me think the concept has a lot of potential. Some fun details that stood out to me: the robot entrance getting a Christmas hat and holding a present; the wreath smiley face on the department store looking building, and the sky ride vehicles - simple but effective. Great work!!

 

Door 24: Driving Home for Christmas: this held my attention for longer than I expected. Partially to just watch everything go by and soak in the atmosphere that’s sorely missing from Coca Cola’s recent ads, and then to reverse engineer it a bit. I thought you converted everything to rides, but of course, animated scenery is a rather obvious thing to do. And it created some FUN scenery. Who can apply this in other contexts? Surely someone will. One minor disappointment: was waiting for some random shit to show up, like a car crash, alien abduction, a murder scene, or even increasingly absurd things. Maybe in the future.

 

Door 14: Winterfest: you took Mr Freeze, put it in a frosty setting, and then changed the name to something not frosty? Trebuchet, are we in a siege? This is otherwise excellent! Architecture is very clean and cute, ice skating rink one of the best I’ve seen, good details like the ice sculptor, good landscaping (those rocky ridges look beautiful), and the main ride is surprisingly fun to look at for a standard shuttle model. I also find the name of the entertainer (Ol’ Stabby) to be entertaining. We need more simple RCT and this is it.

Door 11: Christmas Market at Abernathy Castle: this is incredible. Your attention to detail is nearly unparalleled. It’s the simple things, how you fill your path spaces with random every day crap in ways that feel authentic, it creates a strong sense of immersion and identity. I also like the little storytelling details. The tree market, the snowball fight, the gardener in the greenhouse, super hidden away… The latter is perhaps my favourite detail. Not because the scene itself is particularly interesting, but because of the garden. Devoid of movement and life, like you’d expect it in a real overcast snowy day. But a trail of footsteps across it makes it feel real. And the footsteps actually lead somewhere. Also good object work. You just released the moss roof objects, and already showing us a different application of it. Also impressed with what you did to my Croatian tree.

Getting around to writing up the last few doors...

 

Antwerp in Snow - this was just as atmospheric as I expected from the overview. The winter overlay suits it really well - especially the warm yellow glow from the windows. Just gorgeous. 

 

Erlebnispark Teutonia Winterzauber - a really sweet little map - I always enjoy taking a 'slice' out of a full park, although as others said, I wish this one was just a bit wider. Lovely architecture though and I like the walkway either side of the water with the little jutting out sections. The different snow tones on the trees was a bit jarring (some with the traditional bluey tone and others with the more muted white) but otherwise this was a really nice entry. 

 

Driving Home for Christmas - such a clever concept and I'm amazed at the effort you put in to bring it to life with all the custom scenery (although having seen A Matter of Perspective I know this isn't unusual for you haha). Really atmospheric and I like how the palette really makes the lorry stand out. Was fun to watch it a few times and notice all the things passing by. I kind of expected it to be a one-angle special so was very impressed you can turn the map around and it still works. Bravo! 

 

chAsiNg aFteR yOu - such a vibe, and such a gear change from Sundial Springs - you are a man of many talents! Looking forward to checking this out in game when it's available. 

 

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Seeing the builders revealed for all these was very interesting - some of my guesses were right and others were totally off the mark. A huge well done to those who submitted multiple entries - both in terms of your impressive productivity but also your support for making sure there were enough doors to take us to Christmas. 

 

And lastly to V1 - you definitely deserve the praise you're receiving for running this (again!) Such a lovely idea and I was genuinely excited to see what was coming up each day. There was indeed a lot of noise on the Discord each time an entry was released, so it's a shame you missed that with the site being a bit quieter. Very sorry to see you go. I wasn't around for whatever drama went down in the past, so my impression of you is only based on this advent calendar initiative so I only have positive things to say. I hope you still check NE from time to time to keep up with the community, even if from more of a distance. In the meantime, all the best!