Planet coaster review

Water has passed under the bridge since Theme Park, the first title that showed how fun it can be to build and run an amusement park. It was other times, other platforms and other developers. Over the years, the genre has evolved, especially thanks to the RollerCoaster Tycoon series, which added many elements to those canonized by Bullfrog, overshadowing the management part, to focus on the editor of the park and its attractions, in particular the roller coaster.

The player no longer wanted to manage, but also to create and watch his work from new, more spectacular points of view. So many functions and many ways of viewing the parks have been inserted, so much so that in some cases it seemed to be more in front of applications than videogames.

Planet Coaster is the latest evolution of this trend, and also the most successful. Frontier, the development team, has received revenge for the loss of the RollerCoaster Tycoon series, producing its perfect rival. But what does it have to offer to those who want to enter this magical world?

We have reviewed Planet Coaster, currently the best playground editor available on the market

 Planet coaster gameplay

SANDBOX MODE AND CHALLENGES

The main mode of Planet Coaster is surely the Sandbox, which is also the one that allows you to immediately explore the potential of the playground editor. 

For a detailed discussion of the editor we refer you to the two tests we have dedicated to the Frontier title when it was still in Early Access ( here you find the first one, and here the second one).

The final version of  planet coaster game from this point of view does not add much, but refines some functions. For example, now the paths are much better attached to each other and when building an attraction the creation of the entry point of the row has been automated; some commands have been added to speed up the park decoration process and so on.

In short,planet coaster frontier listened to his audience and intervened by perfecting something that was already exceptional of his, adding features and removing them where they were not needed.

 Planet coaster release date

• release date
  November 17, 2016
• Developer
  Frontier Developments
• Publisher
  Frontier Developments

The Sandbox mode is exactly what it says it is: you start from an empty and level terrain with unlimited resources and you can indulge in the construction of our playground of dreams, having immediately available all the building objects included in the game.This is the most creative mode and does not weigh down the gameplay with the economic system. 

The Challenge mode, on the other hand, is a sandbox mode with some complications. The first is that you have limited initial resources; the second is that all the economic aspects of running a playground must be taken into consideration; the third is the presence of real challenges, those that give the name to the modality: they are not mandatory, but if they are successfully concluded they give access to extra resources.

The economic system itself is quite complex, but never penalizing. Visitors are not very picky and are willing to spend their money in the park’s attractions and shops.Apart from managing everything in a crazy way, for example by hiring dozens of maintainers when you have three attractions, it’s really hard to end up in red.

The adjustments that can be made to the park’s revenue are really many: you can for example establish the price of the ticket of the single attraction, choose the load with which to start a ride, create priority files with more expensive tickets and so on.

Did you want to become the owner of your own amusement park? Or, maybe planetcoaster, design your own  roller coaster planet? The game  planet coasters will try to help translate your wishes into reality. Well, I’m telling you in this review whether she got it.

Unlike in the Sandbox mode, in the Challenges (as in the Career which we will discuss in the next section), we do not immediately have all the attractions and all the buildings that are to be found available. Searching for something is very simple: select the icon of the type of search you want to do, start it and wait.The only aspect to take into consideration is the monthly cost of a search, which can be more or less high. 

For example, looking for new roller coasters costs a lot and can be detrimental to do so at the beginning of a challenge, when revenues are limited. What matters is to make sure that at the end of the month (the game presents periodic economic reports) the income is higher than the exits, that is to say that management costs must be avoided because of misguided choices.

It is not as difficult as it seems, indeed, the truth is that it is all too simple. Made practical with the game system it becomes really difficult to end up in red and the economy never represents a real challenge, unfortunately.