The theme parks of Planet Coaster are ones of pure joy. Here, during our very first hands on with the sequel, the vibes were immaculate, and it’s heartening to find that at least in this crucial way, nothing much has changed. That’s it though, as Frontier are ascribing to the bigger, better, wackier and wetter school of sequel-building, pushing Planet Coaster 2 straight to the top of our park-building wish list.
Planet Coaster 2, much like its predecessor, aims to capture the wonderful world of the theme park. Rich Newbold, Game Director sets out, “We wanted to build on the amazing foundations of the first game, allowing players a place to build those amazing dream theme parks and water parks and combine them with the amazing coasters.”
It’s water parks that are the watchword here, and through our hands-on time we focused on the key addition of lots of water-based fun and frivolity. That means lots of pools, lots of waterslides and, somewhat unsurprisingly, lots of changing rooms too. The team had to step in early on to point me in the right direction when all of my theme park visitors were standing aimlessly at the ladder to a particularly tall flume – “They need somewhere to change!” they explained. Once I’d found and placed the relevant building things swiftly became right with the world as my digital visitors could now slip into something a little less concealing, and immediately leap into the nearest pool. Here, a half-naked customer is a happy customer.
Richard says, “We wanted to add that great experience of going to a water park into the game. All of those amazing fun days that the team have had, or people in the community, of going to a water park, and experiencing all those things that water parks have: those big swimming pools with wave machines and jets (which you can build in Planet Coaster 2), the lazy rivers and all the amazing different types of flumes, and all the special pieces that you have on the flumes, have been inspired by the amazing days we’ve had.”
You can customise your rides and features more than ever before here, right down to the individual components of different buildings. If you want to remove a balustrade from a building, or just take the whole roof off, you can, and that’s before you alter the colour of every component or swap out the statue on the top.
Just as with the original, the controls and building tools are straightforward and welcoming for both newcomers and younger players, but if you want to be particular, there’s untold levels of depth to help you craft a park that looks truly incredible. There’s been key improvements to the path tools, with more options to dig deeper into both your control over and the laying of those crucial pathways, ensuring that your visitors can get where they need to, but also that it looks exactly how you envisioned it as well.
Planet Coaster 2 looks simply lovely, and the addition of water-based rides and scenery just pushes things even further. The water sloshing around in each of the pools and pouring out of the flumes looks so inviting that at times you might wish you were actually able to visit the park you’ve created. It’s unequivocally bright, colourful, and characterful, with each of the visitors and the other characters you encounter, captured in the chunky, distinctive style that Frontier have honed over the years.
Structurally, there’s a lot here that’s shared with the original game, and Planet Zoo as well, with the central campaign taking you through a series of different park scenarios and having you solve a specific set of problems. Our playthrough saw our somewhat hapless colleague caught up in some kind of park-based hazing, with a rival park owner hiring our services in an attempt to show us up. Obviously, we didn’t let that stand, but it was nice to see the light humour still running through the campaign, and providing something a little bit different amongst all of the park building.
And there’s so much park building to do. Outside of the central campaign, there’s the sandbox mode, which is likely where the most dedicated fans will spend most of their time, utilising the never-ending funds they have on tap to make something spectacular and without constraints. We only had a short couple of hours to get our park started, but I was undeniably happy with what I’d been able to make in that space of time.
There’s a bunch of new themes and landscape options, and the Resort and Mythology options let you turn your park into a mini-Olympus (with water slides), or simply your dream vision of a spectacular waterpark. Whichever you choose, Planet Coaster 2 gives you the tools to make it one of a kind.
If you don’t want to get into the nitty-gritty, Planet Coaster 2’s Blueprints mean that you’ve immediately got access to a fantastic set of pre-made rides – many of which have come from the community – so you can still create a sprawling park oasis, but in record time. Richard told us, “There’s those people who really want to get down to the detail, and there’s tools there for that, but the Blueprints are there for people to very quickly get their theme park up and running. But, if you want to, you might want to customise those Blueprints, so they might also be a great first step for people to make a good theme park.”
It’s clear that Planet Coaster 2 comes from a place of love, and Senior Producer Adam Woods picks up on that. “We’re massive theme park fans, and we knew what we wanted to add to the second game, as well as listening to the community. A big shout out to the team, because I think you can see the passion, the enthusiasm, the expertise that comes out in the game, because we’re theme park fans.”
Everything here supports that idea. You just can’t come away from Planet Coaster without a massive grin on your face, humming the cheerful tunes that accompany your park building, while dreaming of your next step on the way to park-building nirvana. You might as well prepare now, as Planet Coaster 2 is going to provide the park-building ride of your life. No judgement if it turns out to be the lazy river.
