Deep Dive: Coasters and Water Parks Combined

Hayo park managers!

We were delighted to reveal Planet Coaster 2 earlier this month, giving you your very first glimpse of the ultimate water AND coaster park simulation.

Today we’re going to be diving in with a splash as Game Director, Rich Newbold, and Senior Executive Producer, Adam Woods, take us through an even closer look at Planet Coaster 2 in our first Deep Dive video.

What is Planet Coaster 2?

Planet Coaster 2 is the sequel to the beloved Planet Coaster, the quintessential creative management simulation about building and designing amazing theme parks. At its core Planet Coaster is about building an incredible theme park, making sure your guests are happy, managing your economy and expanding your park to feature more exciting rides.

Planet Coaster 2 builds upon these foundations to bring even more creativity, new management options, expanded social functionality and, of course, the massively requested addition of water parks!

An Introduction to Water Parks

In our first Deep Dive video, we took a closer look at a vibrant water park area in a development build of the game as guests enjoyed a day in the sun and water. This park shows off the combination of water parks and rollercoasters possible in Planet Coaster 2, including a first look at the pools and flumes that you can create.

Pools are easily constructed using the new pool building tool which allows you to place geometric shapes or custom shapes to create the ideal swimming area for guests. These intuitive tools make the process of building a new pool quick and straightforward, whether you’re building a simple rectangular pool or a striking central feature for your water park.

The body flumes, shown in the background of the park, were constructed piece-by-piece, just like the rollercoasters further in the distance. This flexible piece-by-piece construction gives full creative control, allowing you to choose exactly how you want each slide to look and function. As with other rides, you’ll have to balance your guests’ excitement, fear and nausea to maximise their enjoyment as they fly down the flume.

Flumes can be further customised with different start pieces, including the vertical drop piece featured in the Deep Dive – guests enter the flume here and go shooting down the slide into the splash pool at the end! The visual appearance of flumes can also be customised, creating clear sections, vibrant colours and patterns.

Bringing water into Planet Coaster 2 has been a very exciting challenge for our development team. We’ve worked hard to provide tools that enable you to create authentic looking water parks, while also making sure that the water itself looks amazing whether your guests are on a flume or cannonballing in from the poolside.

Water rides in Planet Coaster 2 won’t only be limited to standard body flumes of course. As shown in the Deep Dive we’ll also be bringing other water rides to the game, including six-person raft flumes, plughole, sphere and boomerang rides - all inspired by real life water park attractions.

There’s a lot more yet to see, including a variety of flumes, slides and special rides – but don’t fret! We’ll be showing off more in the lead up to the release of Planet Coaster 2 this Fall.

Customisation in Planet Coaster 2

In our Deep Dive, we also showed off some of the results of the new customisation options and tools coming in Planet Coaster 2. These allow you to very quickly create new designs and tailor your park to match your creative vision.

New customisation tools will allow you to attach scenery and blueprints directly to rides, including letting them move in sync with any of the ride’s moving parts. Having decorations move around with the rides in this way allows you to create far more dynamic and visually interesting rides for your guests to enjoy.

This expanded creative control will enable deeper customisation and theming within different areas of your park, allowing you to create visually distinct attractions that have the same basic functionality. For example, as shown in the Deep Dive, a basic teacups ride can be styled with scenery from the aquatic theme to create a truly nautical experience.

To facilitate this, rides come with a simple design to leave more space for your creativity! This will allow you to make them more specially theme as you pick colours and scenery to place directly on the rides.

Some of the returning fan favourite rides from Planet Coaster 1 have been paired back in their design to give you more freedom on how you want to decorate and theme them. This gives you more options over how you place rides around your park with the expanded flexibility in decorating and placement of the park’s surroundings.

All rides also come with predefined patterns which can be selected, including gradients, stripes and chequered patterns. This includes flumes, allowing you to create that iconic, bright and colourful water park look.

It’s not only flat rides that can be customised in Planet Coaster 2 – we’ve also added tools that enable you to add a personal touch to coaster cars and trains. As shown in the Deep Dive, adding a few scenery pieces to the Whirlpool coaster cars help them to quickly take on the fun Aquatic theme. Each decorative piece doesn’t need to be placed manually either, with options to enable instant mirroring and twinning to quickly apply to multiple cars and trains on a coaster for consistent theming.

We’re looking forward to seeing what our wonderful community will do with all these creative tools, given time and imagination!

Additional Management Features

Introducing water parks in Planet Coaster 2 also brings a slew of new management features and additions. Running a water park is a very different beast to managing a coaster park, with new requirements you’ll need to be aware of!

We’ve introduced new staff types, including the Lifeguard, who is responsible for looking after the safety of your guests in your pools. Lifeguards will manage their station and monitor guests to ensure that they’re safe and not struggling in the water. It’ll be down to you to make sure that you have enough lifeguards, and they have a good enough view of your pools.

Changing rooms are another very important requirement for water parks. Guests will need to have access to enough of them so they can change into their costumes and then back into their clothes to enjoy the rest of the park.

Water parks will also require water filtration systems for pools and flumes, and you’ll need to manage these carefully to guarantee that the water stays clean and safe for guests to enjoy!

Water parks bring new economic opportunities for your parks, with guest services where guests can buy pool passes, monetising their access to the pools, and keeping your park budget going.

Also in our first Deep Dive, we showed off Splash Emporium, where guests can buy inflatables to play with in the pools, including lilos and rubber rings. You’ll have to set the right price point for these products, so they’re appealing to guests but make enough profit to keep your park running.

Expanded management features aren’t only limited to water parks. Coasters and rides now have a power system, so you need to make sure that they have enough power to run. These power systems also require maintenance, with staff working to keep everything running.

The most important part of any park are the guests. For Planet Coaster 2 we have refreshed the guests, introducing a lot more diversity and variety in their appearance and new ways for them provide more feedback into whether they’re having a good or a bad time in your park. For example, guests will now give immediate feedback if they’ve been on a ride that was too thrilling, fearful or nauseating.

Guests are also now affected by bigger factors in the park, such as the weather. For example, guests will be affected by sunburn as they enjoy the vibrant (and hot!) water parks. You’ll need to manage your park carefully so that guests have access to suncream and ensure there is enough cover around your parks to protect them from the hot sun.

You can also enjoy coasters and rides in first person view as a guest so you can see your guest’s experience from their eyes as they go around the park. First person mode can be used in all flat rides and water flumes, including the large 6-person water rides.

We’ve only scratched the surface of the management additions coming in Planet Coaster 2. With more still to discover, there will be plenty to keep you busy, including water supply needs for rides, ride attendants, and new entertainers to keep guests happy!