Tree

Lore & Background

In the world of RollerCoaster Tycoon, every park begins as a blank canvas of flat or rolling terrain, and the tree is almost always the first brushstroke. Before a single track piece is laid, before a queue is built, the designer plants trees to define the edges of the park, to soften the transition between the built environment and the surrounding landscape. They are the cheapest way to buy a sense of permanence and scale.

The game's designers understood that a park with zero trees reads as a construction site, no matter how many coasters you have. The Scenery Rating mechanic rewards players who think in clusters and layers: a single lone oak looks sad, but a grove of mixed pines and oaks with a few palms tucked in for variety reads as intentional landscaping. This subtle pressure to design with greenery is one of the things that separates a five-star park from a flat, grey one, and it is why trees, despite their simplicity, appear in virtually every well-designed layout.

Across the base game and its expansion packs, the tree roster grows. The base set gives you the classic temperate species, while additional packs introduce tropical palms, exotic foliage, and seasonal variations. Each new species is a small narrative nudge: you are no longer building a generic park, you are building a park in a specific place, under a specific sky, and the trees are the first thing the guest notices when they step off the bus.

In Their Own Story

The morning fog had not yet lifted off the valley floor when Mara crouched at the edge of the new park's western boundary, her stylus hovering over the terrain grid. She had already placed the queue for the new giga-coaster, already run the numbers on ticket prices and staffing, but none of it felt finished. The park looked like a machine dropped into a field.

She selected the pine tree from the scenery menu—tall, dark, slightly windswept—and placed the first one at the corner where the path met the tree line. Then another. Then a cluster of oaks behind the queue, their canopies overlapping just enough to create a dappled shadow. A few palms near the lagoon, because the water park expansion had given her the excuse she needed. Step back. Step back further.

The fog rolled through the grove and the park suddenly had a horizon. It had a *where*. She smiled, saved the file, and went to make coffee.

Reader's Guide

Visual style: Trees in RollerCoaster Tycoon are rendered as small, stylized sprites that sit on the terrain grid. Pines are tall and narrow with a conical silhouette, oaks are broader and rounder, and palms have the characteristic arching fronds. Each species has a distinct colour palette—deep greens for pines, warmer yellows-greens for oaks, and bright tropical greens for palms—making it easy to read the climate of a park at a glance. The sprites are simple but effective, and they look best in clusters of three to seven, where overlapping canopies create a sense of depth.

Placement rules: A tree can be placed on any terrain surface tile, including flat ground, slopes, and the edges of water bodies (though not directly in water). It occupies a single tile and does not block guest paths unless you place it directly on a path tile, which is generally avoided. Trees can be rotated in the base game, giving you slight variation in orientation. You can also place them on elevated terrain to create layered, hillside groves that look especially effective around the park's perimeter.

Cost and effect: Trees are among the cheapest scenery items in the game, costing only a few pounds to place and a small fee to remove. Their primary mechanical effect is on the Scenery Rating: each tree adds a small amount of scenery value, and the variety and density of your tree placement matter. A park full of identical pines in a perfect grid will score lower than one with mixed species in organic clusters. Trees do not directly affect ride ratings, but a higher Scenery Rating lifts your overall Park Rating, which in turn influences guest spending and word-of-mouth.

Practical tip: Use trees as visual dividers between ride areas and as a soft border around the park entrance. A ring of mixed trees around the outer perimeter is the single highest-value landscaping move in the game.

Did You Know?

• Trees are among the cheapest scenery items in the entire game, costing only a few pounds to place, which makes them the go-to tool for quickly raising your Scenery Rating on a tight budget.
• The Scenery Rating rewards variety and clustering: a grove of mixed species scores higher than the same number of identical trees arranged in a grid, encouraging organic, natural-looking placement.
• Expansion packs introduce new tree species—tropical palms, exotic foliage, and seasonal varieties—letting you match your park's greenery to a specific climate or theme.
• Because trees occupy only a single terrain tile and do not block paths (unless placed directly on one), they are the safest and most flexible scenery item for filling empty space around rides and queues.