I have many fond memories of the hours I wasted in the Tycoon style games. Most of those hours were spent trying to build my business empire in Transport Tycoon but, every so often, I’d take a break for something more…cathartic. That’s when I (and I’m sure many other gamers) turned to Rollercoaster Tycoon, a game which could satisfy that sadistic need every child has to wreck mayhem on unsuspecting NPCs. In the years since though I hadn’t gone back to the various incarnations in that franchise, my attention drawn elsewhere by shiny AAA titles. However you’d be hard pressed to miss the fervor that has surrounded Planet Coaster the latest incarnation of Rollercoaster Tycoon to come out of Frontier Developments. It’s an impressive game however I think the good ship nostalgia has long since set sail on these types of games, at least for myself.
Planet Coaster is your typical business management game; putting you in charge of the day to day tasks of managing an amusement park. You’ll build attractions, rides and design your own rollercoasters to delight and terrify your park guests. There’s numerous variables to fine tune that ensure your park stays clean, enjoyable and above all profitable. Depending on the mode you select you can either pit yourself against a set of objectives, race the clock or simply set yourself free to do whatever you feel like. As someone who hasn’t played any of the intervening instalments in this franchise since 20 years ago Planet Coaster feels like the modern equivalent of that game I lost so many hours on.
The look and feel of Planet Coaster takes inspiration from The Sims franchise, favouring stylized models, a clean UI and a similarly styled sound track. The level of detail is impressive, especially when you see that all the models are constructued from different parts that are available for you to use. Occaisionally there are performance issues which seem to stem from menus not rendering properly but otherwise everything runs well, even at full speed. Considering Frontier Developments’ pedigree this level of polish should come as little surprise as they’ve been invovlved in Tycoon style games for some 13 years now, having developed expansion packs for RollerCoaster Tycoon 2.
There are 3 main game modes in Planet Coaster: campaign, challenge and sandbox. Campaign sets you against a pre-established park with a number of goals that you need to work with and serves as a decent introduction for Planet Coaster’s main mechanics. Challenge gives you a blank slate and a limited amount of funds in order to establish yourself as a self-sufficient park. Sandbox is, as you can probably guess, the creative mode that allows you to do whatever you wish. Depending on how you like to play these kinds of games one of the modes will likely suit you better than the rest. However I’m sure most people will just head straight for creative so they can start building the death-coaster of their dreams.
I started off playing in campaign mode figuring that it would be the best way to get introduced to the game’s mechanics. If you’ve played these kinds of games before you’ll be able to figure most things out and the pop ups on the left hand side will be able to fill in the blanks. However for new comers it’d probably take some getting used to as there’s no clear direction on how to go about the rudimentary tasks that the game assumes you know how to do. As things start to get a little more complicated, like when you’re trying to figure out your finances, this is where the tutorial system starts to break down and you’ll likely be off to the Steam forums searching for advice. This is not a bad thing per se, however it does show that Planet Coaster is still polishing up some of the rough edges left over from its Early Acess days.
I have to admit though that after playing the campaign for a couple hours I simply lost interest in playing. Back in my younger days I can remember having lots of fun building all sorts of wild and whacky coasters. Now though? The idea of building a coaster just didn’t have the same sense of joy it used to, echoing the feelings I had back when I played Contraption Maker (the spiritual successor to The Incredible Machine). I’ve been told that challenge mode is a far better way to play the game and I’ve been meaning to go back, really I have, but the drive to do so just hasn’t been there. It’s a shame really as Planet Coaster seems like an objectively good game, one that does its heritage justice, but it just didn’t tickle me in the right way.
Looking at the stats of Planet Coaster though I can definitely see that I’m in the minority, with the average play time hovering around 13 hours.
Planet Coaster brings with it all the things that captivated many of us in our younger days: the freedom to build the amusement park of our dreams, the thrill of designing the perfect roller coaster and, of course, unleashing untold destruction on your park’s denizens. For this old gamer though the magic just wasn’t there, the couple hours I spent with the game just not hitting the nostalgia buttons hard enough to make me come back. Planet Coaster is an extremely well built game however, one that is likely to provide many hours of entertainment for those who love games like this. Maybe one day I’ll find the drive to go back and change my mind but, for now, it’s going to be sitting on the shelf.
Rating: 7.0/10
Planet Coaster is available on PC right now for $44.99. Total play time was 2 hours with 13% of the achievements unlocked.
