Planet Coaster
In this park, there’s always room for high rollers
SUNNY SKIES have been missing from videogames for much of this century, so any opportunity to escape the grimdark worlds of COD or Gears of War is welcome. This month’s other game review, WatchDogs2, presents players with a suitably sweltering San Francisco, but no game can match Planet Coaster for sheer summer fun.
Another thing we haven’t seen much of, unless you’re into soccer or farming, is management games. 2013’s Sim City wasn’t a huge success, and now Frontier is resurrecting theme park management.
And what a resurrection. Planet Coaster is sunshine collected and condensed into something endlessly entertaining, a game dedicated to making people happy, rather than making them dead. Frontier’s experience with Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 and Thrillville shows through, and across the Career, Challenge, and Sandbox modes, there’s a wealth of imagination and friendliness on offer.
Building rides is fiddly due to the need to run paths to and from the ride’s entrance and exit. For the entrance, a special “queue path” is needed, while any old path will do for the exit. This isn’t obvious if you haven’t watched the tutorials, which are hosted on YouTube, and open in a browser window on the game’s opening screen. Doing it this way takes agency away from the player, and isn’t really a substitute for a proper tutorial. You can work through the easiest scenarios to pick up the basics, but when something doesn’t click, like the queue paths didn’t for us, frustration can set in.
The rest of the time, building your park is a breeze. Sandbox mode allows you to alter the terrain, leveling it under rides, and creating the perfect slope for a large rollercoaster. Rides are built from blueprints, apart from the large rollercoasters, which are bespoke, assembled from a kit of parts, and graded on the excitement, fear, and nausea they provoke. The key to a great coaster is to get a balance of the three, and a heatmap is provided during testing to show where the puke may fly, but it’s always wise to hire janitors to clear up spillages in the exit path, and mechanics to make sure things don’t get too frightening. Then there’s trash cans, restaurants, restrooms, and decorations. Almost everything can be customized, down to the text on signs. The emphasis is shifted hard toward creation and pleasing the crowds, and away from hard business choices, and it’s all the better for that.
The game is a wonderful slice of summer in these dismal winter months, a relaxing experience that will last late into the night, and proof of how much fun it can be to make little computer people happy.