- Simulation Evolved.
Planet Coaster is a theme park simulation game created by Frontier Developments. Initially named Coaster Park Tycoon, the game follows RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 (also developed by Frontier) in several respects, involving the creation of a functioning theme park, but it adds a lot of new features and control to the creation process. The game was initially announced in January 2015 with an alpha publicly accessible by pre-ordering from Frontier's store. The alpha was first made available in March 2016 with the game coming to Steam in August of that same year, and was released on the 17th of November in 2016.
The game includes the standard gameplay (build rides and shops, hire staff, keep guests happy, etc) that RollerCoaster Tycoon did. However, it allows for buildings to be constructed piece by piece and for paths to be build at numerous angles. The player is also provided with lots of different building parts and decoration and a robust terraforming tool to tailor their park exactly how they want it.
The website can be found here
and the Steam page can be found here.
Planet Coaster provides examples of the following:
- Action Girl: One of the entertainers is Miss Ellie, a female version of the typical Wild West outlaw, with the description "No damsel in this dress!"
- An Interior Designer Is You: To an even greater extent than RollerCoaster Tycoon before it, since you have a bevy of building pieces and scenery to choose from, and much more freedom than in RCT.
- Artificial Stupidity: Sometimes the guests can be like this, such as ignoring distant rides outside crowded boundaries.
- Brand X: Most of the roller coaster designs are lifted directly from real world coasters, but with generic names for copyright purposes. Meaning, for instance, you want to use The American Arrow if you're building an Arrow Dynamics looping coaster, Canyon Runner for a mine train with Big Thunder Mountain Railroad trains, Anubis for a Giovanola hypercoaster, Equalizer for an Arrow Dynamics hypercoaster, Rage for a Bolliger & Mabillard hyper/giga coaster, etc.
- Boring, but Practical: Flat rides serve the same role as they did in RollerCoaster Tycoon, maintaining the bottom line while the larger rides make the big profits. The disadvantage of being larger than their RCT counterparts is a moot point, given that conserving space isn't as much of a concern as in that franchise, and that they can still easily offset their construction and running costs with their modest profits.
- Crossover: With Ghostbusters, Knight Rider, Back to the Future, The Munsters, and Cedar Fair
- Easy Level Trick: The description for the Pirates Cove level states that Peg Leg Pete couldn't seem to find his treasure. In fact, the treasure can be found beneath the cliffs of the park and bulldozed for $7,500, which can be used for paying off the loan.
- Gangplank Galleon: An entire theme is based around pirates, and it comes with its own entertainer, Captain Lockjaw.
- Guilt-Based Gaming: Go ahead, fire a staff member and try not to feel like the biggest jerk in the world as they sadly drag themselves to the exit. Their thoughts will not make you feel any better.
- Hipster: Foxy, the Street Fox Coffee mascot was intentionally based on this archetype...and the Furry Fandom.
- Level Ate: The Festive theme has a lot of scenery like this, with a gingerbread building theme and a lot of giant sweets that can placed around your park.
- Made of Explodium: Averted with the coaster carts, instead they'll disappear into a puff of smoke after making an impact upon derailment.
- Made of Iron: Guests can get hit by coaster carts that go off-track, and they won't get hurt at all. In fact, they'll cheer after getting up!
- Popularity Polynomial: Happens to rides In-Universe. After they've aged beyond a certain threshold, they escalate back up in popularity until they achieve "Classic" status, where they no longer decay in popularity.
- Potty Dance: Guests who's bathroom needs are not being met will perform these.
- Princess Classic: Princess Amelie, the fairy-tale entertainer is designed to invoke this.
- Ragdoll Physics: The guests fly into the air like this whenever they're hit by a coaster.
- Scenery Porn: Even in its alpha stages, the game looks purdy. Almost every nook and cranny of the game has a huge amount of detail poured into it.
- Shown Their Work: To get authentic sounds for the wooden roller coasters, the game's designers went to Holiday World in Indiana. The wooden coaster sounds are all made from recordings of The Voyage.
- Shout-Out: Many real roller coaster models have this.
- The Canyon Runner is for mine train coasters with trains from Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, while 'Gold Fever' is for anyone wanting to use the tilting trains of the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train.
- The real Steel Vengeance and Copperhead Strike coasters are available in-game, both as a pre-built blueprint, and as a custom layout.
- Speaking Simlish: Planco language, which vaguely sounds like American English, British English, and Latam Spanish depending on the spoken words and characters, it coexists with regular English in written text, and it uses alphabetic letters. It even has its own dictionary!
- Terrain Sculpting: Upped to 11 in the game as you can literally do almost everything with the terrain, even make floating islands!
- Unexpectedly Realistic Gameplay: Guests will absolutely refuse to ride a coaster if it hasn't been tested yet. How will they know that it's safe otherwise?
- Video Game Cruelty Potential:
- Guest bowling is back. There's even an achievement for knocking over 300 people with a single roller coaster crash!
- There's a cheat code that makes everyone in the park throw up at once.
- Wake-Up Call Boss: Pirate Cove is an optional one, provided the player opts out of using the aforementioned Easy Level Trick. The previous two parks, Pirate Battle and Creature Awakens, are essentially Video Game Tutorials that serve to familiarize the player with certain actions like creating rides and hiring staff members. Pirate Cove serves a similar function with the loan feature, but this puts a handicap on the player by requiring them to pay a certain fee each month; this requires them to not only expand the park, but also pay close attention to their finances in order to maintain a profit and pay off the loan.
