Frontier Developments’ recent livestream and deep-dive video revealed a wide variety of new Planet Coaster 2 gameplay features, rides, and elements. Nearly everything, from the placement of objects to the pathing system, has been improved to allow us more creative freedom with our parks. We’ve learned a lot from this livestream, so let’s review the new details.
Improved Management
One of the key things in park management is, well, management. Luckily, we got glimpses into some new things you’ll have to keep track of in Planet Coaster 2.
The first part of the stream showed that players will have to provide even more for their guests. This involves shading them from the sun, ensuring lifeguards are stationed, and sufficiently filtering pool areas. Keep in mind that this shading mechanic will affect all the guests in your park. This means that guests in longer queues might need to be covered, just like in real life.
Alongside the additional needs of the guests, you’ll be able to monetize certain aspects of the new pool areas. For instance, the stream showed that guests can purchase pool passes that allow them entry into the designated pool areas. You can also provide pool-themed shops and services for your guests. These include changing rooms, food/drink shops, and merchandise shops.
Another huge detail revealed is that parks will now require power to keep everything running. They didn’t go into detail on this element, but it looks like rides and shops will require power. The various lights that you place around your park may also require power.
Let’s move on to some new rides we saw during the livestream.
Slides & Rides
With the addition of pools in Planet Coaster 2, we also get some awesome new slides to accompany them.
We only got a brief look at some of them, but many of the slides can accommodate rafts. The big one that they showed off was a fly trap-like slide that can take six-person rafts. As for the other single-rider slides, they all have different types of corkscrews, flumes, and other neat designs that your guests can ride on. These can all be edited and shaped however you want.
The livestream also revealed some new thrill and casual rides. These include a spinning swing ride, a splash drop ride, and some redesigned classics like the teacups.
Speaking more about these redesigns, many original and new rides will look plainer so players can have a better canvas to theme them however they like. An example is when they showed off the teacups and spinning 360 rides, each with an aquatic theme. The teacups favored a more cutesy and colorful type of aquatic theme. As for the 360 ride, it featured a much darker tone.
All of it was made possible by the game’s new customization tools and features. Speaking of that, let’s dive deeper into these new design options.
Customization 2.0
For those of you who have played Planet Coaster, you know how important the props, objects, and scenery are in making your park really pop. After the livestream ended, we were confident that the new design tools would completely change how we theme our parks.
The most prominent customization feature that we saw was the ability to place objects and props directly onto rides! Late in the steam, they showed this off by placing objects onto one of their rollercoaster rides. They put things like lights and other props on the side and front of the coaster.
The new mirror tool, which enables you to mirror placed objects on all the cars and trains on the ride, was also shown off. They then combined this feature with the new scalability tool, which let them downsize the props to fit onto the coaster. Keep in mind that this tool isn’t just limited to the rides. Players can scale, move, and alter objects all around their park.
In our opinion, this will change everything about park design in Planet Coaster 2. It allows for a level of creative freedom we didn’t have in the first game, and it only gets better there.
A new revamp that players have been asking for is an improved pathing system. We saw this in practice a few times during the stream, but so far, it looks like it has truly been expanded to allow for larger areas that your guests can hang out or walk around in. New tools can also help players segment and structure their paths to be as symmetrical or diverse as they want.
Overall, these new additions are shaping up to make Planet Coaster 2 a true, expanded park-building experience.
Queued Up
Planet Caster 2 is looking increasingly like the ultimate park builder. Hopefully, we’ll soon get a better look at some of the other aforementioned mechanics and features.
We at The Guide Hall are extremely excited to see just how in-depth we can get with our pools and parks once Planet Coaster 2 releases. Look for more content coming soon as more details emerge!