AI is coming to take my job, so I’d better start looking for a new one. Luckily, there are a ton of job simulators on Steam, and I’m going to play as many as I can until I find my next career. This week’s job: Ranger’s Path: National Park Simulator, an early access open world game about being a park ranger.
The moment I step inside Faremont National Park to begin my first day as a park ranger, I realize I may have made a mistake. I pick up a radio, I put on a uniform, but then I notice the items in my inventory and stare at them, perplexed, for a few long moments.
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Also, I have magic powers. Even though it’s only my first day on the job I’m already imbued with a mystical “Ranger Sense”: when holding the right mouse button I can scan the wilderness for problems, like the footprints of poachers, or detect nearby wildlife and flora. Was I born with this sense, like the weakest yet most ecologically friendly member of the X-Men? Or is my brand new enormous ranger hat just enchanted?
After my first couple days of rangering I’m a little discouraged that so much of my job seems to be slowly screwing back together benches and painstakingly collecting discarded bottles—but then my boss radios me with a request that changes everything.
A quick word about my boss: we’ve never met, but she calls me on the radio more frequently than Lester does in GTA Online. There’s a hiker missing! Someone spotted a bear! We need a new picture of a landmark! This is an open world game, the map is surprisingly huge, and these jobs never seem to happen anywhere near each other—so I spend most of my time sprinting around the park and even doing a bit of driving in my ranger truck just to complete her assignments.
As bosses go, though, she’s pretty cool. Even though she calls seemingly every 30 seconds with a new problem, I eventually discover I’m free to turn her requests down, and there doesn’t seem to be any consequences when I do so. For instance, while I was on the top of a mountain trying to photograph an owl, she told me a park visitor was missing. It was getting dark, I’d been sprinting for a long time to reach the mountaintop, and I didn’t want to have to run all the way back across the map just to find some idiot lost hiker.
Should I really be allowed to prioritize owl pictures over human lives?
So, I turned down the assignment, and she was fine with it. “It’s your decision,” she said. That’s great, though… should it really be my decision? I’ve been a park ranger for two days, should I really be allowed to prioritize owl pictures over human lives?
Back to that exciting radio call: one day my boss says some hikers are setting up tents and tells me to check that they’ve got the proper passes to camp in the park overnight. Oh, hell yes.
Let me explain why this is a dream come true. In real life I visit my little neighborhood park almost every day, and when I see someone breaking the rules by smoking, littering, using motorized vehicles on the trail, or letting their dog run off the leash, I get all stressed out and have vivid fantasies about yelling at them. (I never do because I’m a coward.) This is my chance to do what I’ve always wanted to do: punish people who think the rules don’t apply to them. (Note: I sometimes walk my dog off the leash, too, so not only am I a coward, I am a hypocrite.)
Best of all, I don’t need to even wait for a specific assignment! I can walk up to any of the hundreds of visitors in the park and demand to see their pass. If the pass has expired, or if they’re doing something they don’t have a pass for, like camping, or if they have a morning pass but it’s a few minutes after noon, I can give them a warning, fine them, or even kick their non-compliant ass out of the park altogether.
This is awesome! Every new morning becomes a fresh chance to give people a hard time for trying to enjoy nature. As I repair signage and clear fallen trees, long lines of visitors begin hiking up my freshly-opened trails—and I’m waiting there to greet them like a wilderness bouncer.
It’s especially satisfying to kick out campers who don’t have the proper pass because I get to stand there smugly watching as they fold up their tents and walk their asses back down the trail. Haha! Go sleep in the comfort of your home, suckers!
Is it entrapment to encourage hikers to go fishing specifically so I can leap from the bushes and demand to see their permits?
Being the meanest ranger in history is my new main quest, and soon I’ve kicked at least one person out of the park for each of the possible infractions… except one. I’ve never been able to ban someone for fishing without a pass, because I’ve never actually seen anyone fishing. I’ve found a few distant fishing spots along the river, though no one ever seems to visit them.
So, I spend the next couple of days ignoring my boss’s radio messages about poachers and damaged bridges and spend all my time completely repairing the trails that lead to the fishing spots.
Is it entrapment to encourage hikers to go fishing specifically so I can leap from the bushes and demand to see their permits? Perhaps. I am sad to say, even with hikers now flooding those newly opened trails, I still haven’t been able to catch anyone fishing without a permit.
But I’m not giving up. Every morning I speed back to that part of the park, the lights on my ranger truck flashing, then sprint down the trail to stand guard. Someday, someone will try to enjoy a bit of fishing. And I’ll be there waiting to stop them.
Performance evaluation
Would I like to be a park ranger IRL?
Sorta! I like walking around, I like nature, and I would absolutely love the power to kick people out of a park if they’re not following the rules.
Would I make a good park ranger IRL?
Absolutely not. I couldn’t fix a broken bench if I had a month and a whole truck full of screwdrivers. Also, I don’t think I could pull off that big hat in real life.
Is Ranger’s Path: National Park Simulator good?
Pretty much! Many of the tasks are repetitive and I wish the minigames were more interesting, but it’s got a surprisingly huge and nice-looking map and it’s a low-pressure environment where even if you mess up or turn down requests, nothing bad happens. Find it on Steam.
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