When the PS5 launched in 2020 all my friends were fighting formidable bosses in Demon’s Souls or swinging around a snow-blanketed New York City in Marvel’s Spider-Man Miles Morales, but not me. Instead, I was obsessing over where to place wooden benches and garbage cans in my collection of colorful digital theme parks created in Planet Coaster: Console Edition. And I loved every single moment.
Even almost four years later, Planet Coaster has remained a permanent fixture on my console’s hard drive, and I still return regularly to build a thrilling new coaster, or further reposition the scenery around my park. So, when Planet Coaster 2 was announced earlier in the summer, it shot straight to the top of my most anticipated games of the year list.
Scheduled to launch on November 6 (for PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC), I’m counting down the days until release. But earlier this week, I was given the opportunity by Planet Coaster developer Frontier to get an early preview of this park-building simulator sequel, and after playing two hours of Planet Coaster 2, my hype levels are even higher.
Planet Coaster 2 is bigger, better and wetter
My preview session with Planet Coaster 2 was split into two segments. Firstly, I was thrown into a mid-game career mode level called “Double Trouble”. Here players are tasked with building a park that has been split into two distinct halves — one side is a blank canvas for you to construct freely, and the other has strict rules that you must follow to achieve your goals.
If you’ve watched any of the pre-release trailers for Planet Coaster 2 you’ll know the big new addition is the ability to create water parks, and as somebody who spent pretty much their entire childhood playing RollerCoaster Tycoon 3’s Soaked expansion, this was very much my dream addition to the game. And I’m pleased to report building a pool is very intuitive, and fits naturally within the existing tools.
I set about creating a multi-pool setup, one side as a general swimming area, and the other a splash zone for my water slides. Creating a perfectly shaped pool was straightforward, and there are several pre-made options to choose from if you don’t want to go to the trouble of building from scratch (though in Planet Coaster creating from scratch is the whole fun).
At this point, I was clearly supposed to go about demoing the water slide creation tools, but I have to confess that I got hugely distracted placing individual scenery items. To start, I constructed a purple rock cluster as a decorative piece, before being preoccupied with placing underwater pool lights evenly spread apart. Then I started lining up a row of trees to flank my pool. To me, this is where Planet Coaster 2 shines brightest, the times when you get completely lost in what might seem like minutiae. But I had more fun placing those trees than I do in a lot of action games.
Of course, once my pool looked aesthetically pleasing (or at least vaguely so, I was under time pressure so had to rush a little). I moved on to adding slides, And much like the coaster creation suite, putting together a thrilling water ride is very straightforward. But while the nuts-and-blocks of snapping together pieces of a slide is simple, there’s so much depth here to create exactly the slide you want. You can even customize the color of each piece.
What struck me most during my time in this career mode level of Planet Coaster 2 was how many new options are available to players. It’s almost overwhelming how many different slides, rides and bits of scenery there are to choose from, and with so much choice, I cannot wait to see what the infinity creative PlanCo community dreams up later this year.
After around 45 minutes, I was whisked away from this career mode level into the game’s restriction-free sandbox mode. Here I experimented with the coaster creator, which remains largely unchanged from the first game. That’s no bad thing as Planet Coaster 1 makes constructing adrenaline-spiking coasters a breeze, though I found some of the UI changes a little confusing, and in general, menus felt unresponsive. But this could be down to the fact I was sampling a development build, and these aspects will hopefully be polished further in the final product.
Overall, from my all-too-brief time with Planet Coaster 2 (seriously, I could have happily continued playing for the rest of the day), this sequel is definitely focused on bringing fan-requested additions to the series, without trying to revolutionize the core foundation. Considering the strength of the first game, that’s all I ever wanted from Planet Coaster 2.
I spoke to the developers about Planet Coaster 2
After getting to play Planet Coaster 2 for myself, I was given the chance to speak to two of the developers at Frontier, Rich Newbold (Game Director) and Adam Woods (Senior Executive Producer). My first question was whether they had always planned for water parks to be the flagship addition to the sequel.
“It was a key part of what we wanted to add in the sequel,” explained Rich. “Water parks provide us with great creative opportunities and management opportunities to really challenge our park builders”. Though bringing a wet-and-wild element to Planet Coaster 2 did present the team with some hurdles to overcome. As Rich explains, “Bringing water into the game in a way that is realistic, authentic and visually looks good has been a great opportunity for the team to tackle”, and based on my experience the team has succeeded.
The development team was also eager to ensure that water slides fit naturally into the formula established in the first Planet Coaster. “It was key for us to keep the parity between what people had experienced with the original Planet Coaster of building piece-by-piece roller coasters, and now in Planet Coaster 2 you can build flumes piece-by-piece,” said Adam.
Of course, Planet Coaster 2 brings more to the franchise than just swimming pools and inflatable rubber rings. I asked the developers what their favorite new additions beyond the water parks are: “For me, it’s the ability to add scenery directly onto your coaster cars and flat rides. This lets you take our amazing scenery pieces, scale them and attach them to your rides giving you more creative control over the theming,” said Rich.
You may have noticed that this sequel is arriving on PC and console simultaneously, a change from Planet Coaster 1 which launched on PC in 2016 and console in 2020. This multi-platform release was important to Frontier and was made possible thanks to the experience gained by porting the first game and bringing Planet Zoo to consoles earlier this year, alongside working on the Jurassic World: Evolution series.
While management simulation games often feel most at home on PC, Planet Coaster 2 looks set to offer console players an equally smooth experience (for the record, my demo was played on an Xbox pad). “It was a key thing for us from the beginning to ensure there’s a parity in experience whether you’re playing on PC or playing on gamepad,” said Rich.
A recurring word during my conversation with Rich and Adam was “authenticity”, with Adam even stating “Authenticity is a key part of the Planet Coaster games”, and this is an element the team at Frontier looks to have truly nailed based on my early preview of the sequel. Planet Coaster 2 is shaping up to offer an unrivaled theme park management experience that will delight veterans and newcomers alike.
Planet Coaster 2 is going to steal all my free time
I was already very excited about Planet Coaster 2, and after playing the game for myself, my anticipation levels have now skyrocketed. Yes, there will be debates about whether this sequel truly does enough to earn the “2” in its title (I’ve already seen members of the community question why it couldn’t have been a large expansion pack instead), but based on my hands-on session, Planet Coaster 2 appears to be adding everything players could want and more.
I already know that come November, Planet Coaster 2 is going to be hoovering up pretty much all my free gaming time. The weather outside will likely be pretty gloomy by then, but I’ll be far too absorbed in meticulously building a sun-soaked water park to care. Although first I’ll probably get distracted ensuring that I’ve got the placement of all my benches and garbage cans just right, and to be honest, those tricky decisions might just take me into 2025.
