[7] RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 places players in charge of managing amusement parks; rides can be built or demolished, terrain and scenery can be adjusted, and prices can be controlled to keep visitors happy.

In the newly added sandbox mode, players have unlimited time and money to create their own custom parks and rides.

In 2016, publisher Atari continued the series with its fourth main installment, RollerCoaster Tycoon World, to largely negative reception.

The same year, Frontier developed and released Planet Coaster, a spiritual successor to the RollerCoaster Tycoon series, which received considerably better reviews.

The career mode features scenarios where players must accomplish goals, such as impressing a visiting celebrity or attaining a certain park rating.

In sandbox mode, players are given a large, empty plot of land and unlimited funds with which to build their own custom parks.

A day/night cycle changes the demographics of the park's peeps; rides at night appeal to teenagers, while the daytime attracts families with children.

Peeps can be harmed and injured by crashing vehicles, but will never die as they did in the previous titles, and if placed in water they will swim out.

Scenery is divided into themes to customize parks, with western-, spooky-, science fiction-, prehistoric-, tropic (Paradise Island)- atlantis- and adventure-themed pieces.

Using the MixMaster feature, the expansion pack also allows players to make their own water-jet displays and co-ordinate them to music.

Additionally, it addressed several criticisms of the first game, such as the inability to build underground, which is available without the expansion pack in the form of an update patch.

[22] The original series' creator Chris Sawyer sued Atari in 2005 for allegedly breaching the terms of a licensing agreement by not allowing auditors access to accounts from 1999 to 2001, during which he claimed he was owed US$4.8 million.

Frontier's Chief Operating Officer David Walsh confirmed the report in statements to Eurogamer and GameSpot, stating that they had previously attempted to resolve the issue without legal action since April 2016.

The Complete Edition was released on September 24, 2020, to Steam, Epic Games Store, and Nintendo eShop.

[28] In March 2024, Limited Run Games announced a physical version of the Switch release of RollerCoaster Tycoon 3: Complete Edition.

In a trading update published by the London Stock Exchange on 2 April, it was reported that Frontier made $1.5 million a year from their sales of RollerCoaster Tycoon 3: Complete Edition on all platforms.

Several other criticisms stemmed from bugs and technical issues,[43][45] such as the game crashing, the camera freezing, staff getting stuck on railings, low framerates and graphical glitches mainly caused when adjusting the landscape.