a game that made me miss a summer I’ve never had

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As a huge fan of both theme parks and computer games, 2016’s Planet Coaster was in many ways a dream game for me. Since playing Bullfrog’s seminal game, Theme Park, back in the mid-90s, first on the Amiga and then on PC, I have been obsessed with theme park management strategy games.

As you can imagine, then, the announcement earlier this year that Planet Coaster 2 was to come in late 2024 (pre-orders are now live, and it launches on November 6, 2024), made me very happy given my history with the PC game and theme park sims.

For context, in Planet Coaster, I vividly remember plotting my parks on paper, then creating them in the game, dividing the map into different themes, just like the beloved theme parks I visited as a kid. Building the parks, and rides, of my dreams (and sometimes my guests’ nightmares) captured some of the magic from those magic kingdoms, but Theme Park also reminded players that these parks aren’t just for fun: they are made to create money.

By placing a French Fries stall, hiking up the salt content, and then putting a drinks stall next to it with inflated prices (and extra ice), I was able to squeeze extra money out of my thirsty punters. As a kid, it was my first lesson that capitalism can be evil… but also fun.

But anyway, while the original Planet Coaster gave me hundreds of hours of enjoyment, there were plenty of things that could be improved. So, when I got the opportunity to have some early time with the sequel, I was keen to jump the queue and see what was new.

Splash back

The biggest change with Planet Coaster 2 is the inclusion of water park features, including pools, flumes, and new themes. Frontier has experience with this, having worked on the Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 expansion pack (old person speak for DLC) Soaked, which added flumes.

Weirdly, I’m not as interested in water parks as theme parks, but being given more things to play with when designing a park is always welcome.

While water park features aren’t the only new things in Planet Coaster 2, it would have been understandable if Frontier had called it a day there. During my time playing the game, it’s clear just how big an undertaking adding water rides has been.

Of course, there are all the additional art assets and models, but it also introduces an entirely new physics system to accurately simulate water, slides, and more.

For players of the original game, creating pools, adding features, and building water slides will feel familiar. Slides are built piece-by-piece in the same way as rollercoasters, and while new players may feel a bit lost, it’s intuitive enough to get the hang of pretty quickly, while also being flexible enough that you can create some pretty spectacular rides in not much time.

Whether or not your guests will want to ride your creations, however, is another question. By testing your rides before they open, you’ll be able to see if the ride works as intended (I.E it doesn’t launch the test dummy into the stratosphere due to a misjudged hump),  and you’ll get feedback on how exciting, scary and how nauseous it’ll make the riders. It’s here where the real art of constructing a theme park ride comes in – you’ll need to balance all of those aspects. Too scary and few people will want to ride it, if it makes people too ill then not only will it put people off riding, but you’ll also have to deal with people throwing up all over your lovely park. You can lower these values by making adjustments to the ride – lowing drops and banking corners for example – but if you make the ride too tame, its excitement will drop and people won’t want to ride.

As with the first game, I can tell this part of building your park could be a huge – and enjoyable – time-sink as you try to build the ultimate ride.

In Planet Coaster 2, more customization options allow you to add design elements to the ride, including coaster cars, and while I only had a short time with the game, it’s clear that it’s going to offer a huge amount of tools to help you craft and tweak almost every aspect of your park.

While I wasn’t overly excited by the inclusion of pools and water slides, I ended up really liking them. Building both was fun and intuitive, and the pools especially looked fantastic.

I didn’t notice much of a visual upgrade over Planet Coaster, but that was still a fine-looking game that was both realistic and cartoony. However, the pools in Planet Coaster 2 look fantastic. Clear, realistic water that sparkles under a cloudless sky made me want to crawl through the screen and dive in. It made me nostalgic for the summer – before I remembered that here in the UK we’d just endured one of the wettest and miserable summers in recent memory.

Interestingly, it seems like the weather in Planet Coaster 2 won’t always be perfect. I didn’t see it in action, but the launch trailer shows guests running for shelter during rainy weather, and I noticed a weather forecast icon in the game’s menu.

While the eternally sunny weather of the first game gave us UK players a nice bit of escapism, including different weather conditions for the sequel, more realistic weather in the sequel will add to the realism – and could bring some interesting challenges – and opportunities. Rainy weather could make guest numbers drop, but some carefully placed umbrella stores could help raise profits – especially if you can, like in Rollercoaster Tycoon, up the prices when the rain starts to fall. There’s that evil capitalism working again.

I also got a glimpse of a few new themes – Mythical and Resort – and my mind is already fizzing with ideas of how I can use them in my parks.

Plus ça changing room

As I mentioned earlier, the original Planet Coaster did a lot of things right – but there were plenty of things that needed improvement, and from my short time with Planet Coaster 2, I found some of those were indeed fixed – but I still had a few concerns.

Making paths in the original, for example, could sometimes be annoyingly fiddly, and you could end up with some ugly bodge jobs when trying to make certain things, such as large plazas. The good news is that Planet Coaster 2 mainly fixes this with new path-making tools that make things much more simple, and give you additional settings to tweak, to help you get the desired effects. I found this made creating paths easier – when on the ground, at least. Creating stairs and bridges seemed to be more complicated – but that might just have been me being a bit rusty.

Putting down shops, food stalls, and guest services, such as toilets and new changing rooms (which need to be added for your guests to use the pools), seems a bit over-complicated as well. In the version of Planet Coaster 2 that I played, some shops and facilities were just ‘shells’ – basically empty buildings that were elaborately themed. Placing them in the park didn’t give me the actual facilities themselves – I would have to find those, then either place them in the park, place the shell over them, or add them by editing the shell’s blueprint (the name for ready-made, yet customizable, pre-built elements).

Confusingly, some facilities in the default Planet Coaster theme were included, while other themes just included the shell. I’ll clarify with Frontier about whether this is just because I was playing a limited preview version of the game, or if this will be the case in the full version as well. I hope not.

By searching for the actual shop or facility to add to the shell, I was reminded about another issue that I’ve had with the original Planet Coaster, which seems to be still present in the sequel. It can be difficult to find certain building parts, and while there is a decent tagging system in place that lets you search, you still need to remember where certain things are located, as there are a few different menus where the item could be. Sometimes things are in the ‘Shops and Facilities’ menu. But then there are also the ‘Scenery’ and ‘Building’ menus, which can also have items you need – and you’ll need to remember which menu they are in. When you start expanding the game with DLC, which will be inevitable considering the various expansion packs the original game got, these menus become more unwieldy, so finding things can take even longer.

I was also shown a level in the campaign mode. I felt that the campaign of Planet Coaster was not that engaging – I usually spent my time playing in sandbox mode, with unlimited money. While this gives you more freedom, it also means you miss out on the challenge and management aspects of the game. So, with Planet Coaster 2, I’m hoping to have more reasons to play the campaign and to dig into the (hopefully) more expansive management options.

From what I played, that might not be the case. The level required me to build a park but only in a certain part of the map, for reasons that didn’t make too much sense. However, unless I was being thick (a likely possibility), once in the game I wasn’t given any onscreen guidance for where to build or suggestions on how to hit the goals to allow me to progress. Eventually, a kindly press representative of Frontier took pity on me and informed me I was building in the wrong part of the map.

This confusion, along with not being sure where to find parts to build facilities and how to make paths on higher levels, makes me worried that the interface of Planet Coaster 2 needs a bit of a rethink with more onscreen help and tips. After all, if an (admittedly a bit stupid) longtime player of the original game can get lost, what hope do newcomers have?

Open for business

While some doubts remain, from the time I had with Planet Coaster 2 I am very excited to play the full release when it launches in November. It’s a charming and fun game that’s clearly been made by people who love the subject matter.

I can see myself playing this game a heck of a lot, and I can’t wait to see what the imaginative community makes with the new and improved tools – as before, PC gamers will be able to easily add other user’s creations to their own parks via the Steam Workshop.

As a fun toy that lets my imagination run wild, my inner child could not be more excited for Planet Coaster 2. The part of me that enjoys playing challenging games, however, will need a bit more convincing.

Planet Coaster 2 releases on November 6, 2024, on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S.

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