There aren’t a lot of studios out there who have the kind of track record with building and management simulation games that Frontier Developments does. 2016’s Planet Coaster saw the developer returning to the fan-favourite genre with great success, and now, eight years later, Frontier has returned with a sequel. From water parks and more expansive coaster customization and various other iterative improvements, Planet Coaster 2 attempts to build on its predecessor’s formula in a number of ways. In a recent interview, we were able to speak with the game’s developers about some of its biggest changes and improvements. Below, you can read our interview with principal lead designer Dave Bamber and tech lead Simon Jordan.
NOTE: This interview was conducted prior to the game’s launch.
"We had great enthusiasm from the community of the original Planet Coaster for making waterparks and we were excited to add it as part of the sequel."
Going into the development of this game, what was the primary guiding principle for the development team, especially coming off of the success of the first Planet Coaster?
Dave Bamber (Principal Lead Designer): As a returning developer from Planet Coaster, there was so much to consider during pre-production, with literal years of suggestions and ideas from inside the company and the community beyond. The guiding principle at this early stage was to enhance and expand upon as many features as we could – to re-examine what players enjoy about the game, and double down on that feeling. We had great enthusiasm from the community of the original Planet Coaster for making waterparks and we were excited to add it as part of the sequel.
For Design as a discipline, we used that principle to break down the gameplay into Coasters, Guests, Economy, Staff, Beauty, Story, and Online Interaction. Looking at the concepts of Simplicity, Guidance, Depth, Effort, Breadth, Charm, Community and Immersion as they applied to the gameplay allowed us prioritise features and ideas we want to pursue.
The addition of water parks is among the biggest highlights in Planet Coaster 2, but much variety can players expect in the options available for rides and attractions?
Bamber: We’ve worked hard to give players a wide variety of things to build for standalone theme parks. There are over 60 coaster and tracked ride types to build, and over 50 amazing coaster blueprints ready to use right away. A brand-new feature is the ability to customise the coasters cars with scenery items, expanding creativity in a whole new creative direction providing players with incredible potential for customisation. It’s a great example of doubling down on the gameplay players love, and we’re so excited to see what players do with it next, we’ve seen such wonderful (and weird!) examples in the office.
Flat Rides are making a return in a huge way. Players loved the heavily themed flat rides in the original Planet Coaster but wanted more flexibility and controls over that theming to allow them to have more versatility on where they could be placed in their parks. We’ve revolutionised the flexicolour options by introducing pattern choices, too. There are over 30 flat rides, some of which were remade from ones from the original game to a more stripped-back feel ready for players to customise with scenery items that animate with the rides.
Our community will also now be able to tinker and share Flat Ride Blueprints to their heart’s content via the Frontier Workshop, and we’ve included 25 Flat Ride Blueprints for launch. From a coaster Blueprints point of view, we’re excited for players to discover that paths and queues are included now.
What are some of the biggest improvements and changes that Planet Coaster 2 is making in terms of coaster customization options?
Bamber: Aside from an unparalleled level of customisation for the overall look of the coaster as we’ve touched upon, the headline feature has to be the animated coaster pieces, these complex track pieces are a high point of modern rollercoaster design.
Less flashy, but just as important is how coasters are made. We’ve overhauled how the ‘twist’ value is stored for coasters, the results are the smoothest coaster rolls we’ve seen, before the player even opens the smoothing tools. Speaking of smoothing tools, we’ve made quality of life enhancements to adjust the strength and direction of the smoothing, to allow for more power and precision.
Dedicated players will also notice that selecting, moving and banking sections of built track is easier and more flexible than before, applying to swathes of track with smooth ins and outs (check out the Setting tab for move Track settings!).
"Aside from an unparalleled level of customisation for the overall look of the coaster as we’ve touched upon, the headline feature has to be the animated coaster pieces, these complex track pieces are a high point of modern rollercoaster design."
Diving into the weeds with guest management is a big part of the experience for many genre fans. The first Planet Coaster already had plenty going on that front, but what are some of the most interesting improvements players can expect here?
Bamber: We saw that players wanted more detail in the guest simulation, and more understanding of how guests acted, leading to a range of enhancements.
We’ve overhauled guest happiness into Guest Moods, which feeds into the overall ‘Guest Experience’. Moods allow guests to build up a bigger picture of the things which make them happy and sad over their whole park stay, beyond a simple happiness meter.
Guests now arrive in the park in organised waves, giving you peaks and troughs of behaviour for guests en masse with an ebb and flow as guests move around your parks. This also gives us tighter control of guests and the economy – if a guest leaves the park early, they take their dollars with them until the next wave.
We’ve made a ‘Luxury’ guest need which controls buying souvenirs from the gift shop, an Entertainment need for going on rides, and a Panic need for high fear rides.
We’ve given guests Dietary Restrictions, so you need to think more about the variety of shops you are placing.
Additionally, we’ve given guests new Ride Tolerances for height, speed and g-forces that benefit from a wider selection of ride types.
This means players will have some interesting new challenges and decisions to make as they build and expand their park with all the incredible enhancements we’ve added in the game.
With simulation and builder games like these, a lot of the experience lives in the details, the smaller things like the menus and the building and pathing interfaces. What kinds of improvements can players expect to those areas in the sequel?
Bamber: We’ve made feature and tool access easier, for example, double clicking or holding A on controller will open the editing tools for that feature, and the radial menus from Planet Coaster Console addition have been expanded and are even available to players on keyboard as well.
Alongside the tutorials on teaching you how to run a theme park, we’ve also made the game easier to pick-up for newcomers by making sure that useful keyboard shortcuts in the original Planet Coaster are visible in the UI too, to make it more intuitive to learn as they play.
Being heavily involved in the path system, I can tell you it wasn’t a simple interface to make! A lot of work went into the system itself to let the player be able to build more often without being obstructed. But from the player’s point of view, the path and pool interfaces are organised into useful tools that can be used immediately – building a plaza is as simple as placing a single stamp of path! For players that want more, the path tool options let you customise to an amazing degree, and we really do expect some players to use them!
From a feature point of view, being able to scale scenery is also a game changing improvement. As a result, the scenery menu is cleaner with fewer duplicates for sizes, and the player can adapt scenery on the fly to multiple situations.
What can you tell us about the event sequencer tool? What kinds of things can players pull off with this?
Bamber: The Event Sequencer is a timeline with a visual interface for organising animated scenery, visual effects, audio effects and lighting changes. It can be standalone, or can link with flat rides, coasters or tracked rides, and the visual interface makes it easy to trigger elements in sequence or in parallel. This visual way of understanding how your effects, scenery and speakers are working in tandem makes it incredibly powerful to construct amazing sequences of events to delight your guests.
On the simple side of examples, players can trigger a flamethrower effect when a coaster goes over a track section, or when a flat ride begins a movement. A common example of something more detailed is to build a ‘Dark ride’, where a richly decorated tracked ride progresses through an indoor series of animated scenes that make up a whole story, such as an undersea adventure constructed using our Aquatic theme, complete with sea monsters and water jets!
Collaborative cross platform saves for the sandbox mode sound like a great addition. Will there be any limitations to the feature, in terms of save file sizes, the use of mods or platform specific features, and so on?
Simon Jordan (Tech Lead): Cross-platform play in the new Franchise mode, as well as collaborative Sandbox saves, presented an interesting technical opportunity, with the need to ensure a seamless experience between console and PC as players jump one at a time into a shared save or compete in a Franchise challenge together.
If you played Planet Coaster 1 on console, you may remember the Oswald Eugene Counter. Similarly, Planet Coaster 2 features a helpful ‘Complexity Meter’ on consoles, which ensures a smooth experience regardless of platform. When sharing across platforms, PC players will also be able to see how their park stacks up against the Complexity Meter, to ensure their friends can open and build/manage the park seamlessly on their consoles.
Are there any plans to make the game PS5 Pro enhanced?
Jordan: Planet Coaster 2 will be PS5 Pro enhanced on launch. We are using the enhancements to push more pixels at a native 4k resolution for even more incredible visuals.
"Players will have some interesting new challenges and decisions to make as they build and expand their park with all the incredible enhancements we’ve added in the game."
As a developer, what are your thoughts on the PS5 Pro? How does boost in GPU help in developing your game compared to the base PS5?
Jordan: It is great to see advancements in hardware, as it gives developers unique opportunities to push the envelope of what is possible in games. We are always keeping a close eye on developments in both console and PC technology, and with the PS5 Pro, we’ll be researching this technology as it rolls out.
What are your thoughts on PSSR? What kind of opportunities will this open for the game?
Jordan: Sony have achieved a console first with AI-enabled upscaling and it’ll be interesting to see how this evolves. In the past we’ve seen advancements in the core set of hardware technologies pushing the envelope of what is possible, now we’re seeing AI being driven by custom hardware changing this landscape. It’s an exciting time to be making games; I think we’re about to start seeing a new era of console innovation.
What resolution and frame rates will the game target on the Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PS5 Pro?
Jordan: We run at a stable 30 fps across all consoles to ensure a smooth and consistent gameplay experience. The base PS5 and Xbox Series S runs at 1440p upscaled to 4k. On Series S it’s 960p scaled up to 1440p and PS5 pro it is native 4k.