Planet Coaster 2 is coming at you like an American Footballer with a celebratory bucket of energy drink. The sequel to Frontier’s acclaimed theme park management game is bringing some big additions with new water parks front and centre.
Water parks were one of the most requested features by the community for the first game, and they’re bringing with them a bunch of new features and wider improvements to make them possible within the new game.
There’s wet and wild entertainment in water parks of various styles, from a simple pool, to water flumes that go from single person slides through to giant vatery venus fly traps that groups of visitors are thrown across on six-person rafts. You’ll get to express your creativity in creating these, just as you can with the coasters, constructing using elements that slot together piece by piece (with new smoothing elements to help ensure things are much nicer to ride) and then testing them for yourself and judging whether or not they get the right mix of excitement, fear and nausea (EFN).
For the slides, they’ll spit guests out into wider pools, which can be placed down as basic geometric shapes or fully customised into layouts and patterns of your own choosing. Visitors will happily go paddling around in them, dynamically popping pool noodles and inflatable doughnuts out of nothingness to keep themselves entertained.
And all of that can exist just around the corner from the coasters and rides that you’ll be familiar with from the first game, with just the need for some changing rooms to let people switch from one kind of attraction to another.
What stitches all of this together, though, is the new, wider pathing that is available throughout the theme parks, enabling you to designate wide areas around pools for guests to meander around for one thing, but also much wider plaza-style areas in other places. That lends itself well to the construction of big open food courts with multiple stands selling overpriced food and then sharing a bunch of picnic benches as people look for somewhere to eat and relax.
Those crowds of people have been redesigned and enhanced to try and give better visual feedback on how they’re feeling about your park, and you’ll naturally want to try and wow them with whatever you create. There’s new themes to lean upon, including the obvious Acquatics theme which includes large animatronic jellyfish, rock corrals and bubble makers, and the more generic Resort theme that’s inspired by the broad and open style of Californian theme parks.
A whole host of rides will be returning from the previous game, such as the spinning teacups, as well as the new Frenzy Frill, which spins guests in a circle on articulated arms. Whether it’s old or new, Frontier is bringing enhanced customisation tools to the table, letting you change the colours and patterns used on rides, which can be applied on a per carriage basis or all together. That’s true of object placement, which can be attached to individual cars, mirrored with the symmetry tool and applied to all of a ride’s cars. There’s real time adjustment of these too, using the advanced placement and scaling tools to get things just right.
And then you have to make sure that your park is running smoothly as well, with a bevy of new management features. One new element is needing to ensure that all of your rides and facilities have power, but there’s a similar feature for water, which requires clean water generators and distributors.
Manning the park are mechanics, janitors, ride attendants, vendors, mascots, and now life guards, who’ll be on standby with a whistle and a high chair to ensure kids are being too naughty – I doubt this game has the worst consequences of running around on wet and slippery swimming pool tiles, but you will also need to ensure there’s enough shade for guests and sunscreen to stop them turning an angry pinkish red.
It’s been a hot minute since Planet Coaster released back in 2016, and since the last expansion arrived in 2019. It’s high time to dive back in, and Planet Coaster 2 looks set to delight with its new options and deeper management.
