Hayo Park Managers!

Form yourself into an orderly queue, keep behind the line and please limit flash photography as you join us for a special trip backstage to look at how the team created the exciting new Parades Pack for Planet Coaster 2!

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Perfecting Parades

We’re always reading and listening to discussions across the community (yes, we read the Reddit posts!), thinking carefully about what to add to Planet Coaster 2 next. Unsurprisingly, Parades have been one of the most requested features and we’ve been really excited about adding them to the game for you to use in your parks.

From the beginning of development on this pack, we wanted Parades to give players an iconic creative opportunity, introducing a completely new way to express yourself within your parks. Our goal with Parades was to give you the ability to design fully customisable floats using scenery, visual effects, and Entertainers, while also bringing some pageantry and drama with walking performers and triggered events like fireworks and special effects for the perfect showstopping finale!

From a technical perspective, Parades make use of a number of similar mechanisms as our tracked rides in the base game. We used this great foundation to expand and build upon these mechanisms to give Parades the level of control they need to support a wide range of options. We also explored adding new tools for the Parade tracks by adding the ability to build Parades through and on path pieces, allowing them to run directly across plazas and paths - an essential for creating iconic processions across the central thoroughfares of your parks. This was a particular challenge we enjoyed tackling, but seeing excited Guests lining the central avenues of our parks was worth the effort!

To support the new Parades, we also looked at adding new scenery pieces focused on the Entertainers for our game’s key Themes, as well as a large collection of basic parade scenery pieces to build float platforms. This provides you with an extensive selection of Parade specific scenery pieces to use in your creations, alongside the already massive selection of scenery pieces already featured in Planet Coaster 2.

Night time visuals were another key part of authentic theme park Parades that we wanted to feature in this pack. We added new emissive scenery pieces and lighting to our Entertainers so you could create some great night time float experiences for your Guests to enjoy.

Everything we’ve seen from our internal teams as they've created and experimented with our existing scenery pieces, animated pieces and new additions has filled us with joy. There’s so much creative potential with animated platforms, scaled scenery, lighting, visual effects and audio, the development team have been really excited to create amazing experiences with Parades.

When designing this new feature, it was important to us that Parades also introduced meaningful gameplay and management considerations, beyond simply being an outlet for creativity. Parades will require financial investment both in their initial setup and ongoing operation, while also affecting your Guests through increased Guest Entertainment, spending, and overall Park Rating. Players must carefully balance the scale of their Parade against their park’s size and economic capacity to maximise its effectiveness.

The potential offered by Parades, their customisable nature, new track systems and support for Entertainers meant we’ve had to work across a number of disciplines to ensure it plays and looks great for everyone. We're delighted with the work the team has put into this new feature and we can't wait to see all the new creations once you get your hands on Parades!

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Small Town Vibes

No Planet Coaster 2 pack would be complete without a new Theme for you to use in your parks.

With Parades, we wanted to create a new Theme that supports that iconic visual of floats going down a central avenue in a real life theme park (and that our community are already building!).

We always start with real life theme parks when creating a new Theme and consider what will work well with new features or the time of year of the release. We also look closely at how the Community are using our existing scenery pieces and any gaps they may be struggling with.

From there, we develop concepts for our preferred architectural styles and scenery pieces to round a Theme into a cohesive whole. Once we have these concepts, we then create the modelled pieces, and animated setup where appropriate, and tie it all together with music tracks that slot in perfectly with the style.  

Small Town Americana was a great basis and a no-brainer for this pack, as a number of places in the USA do local events with floats as well as bigger Theme parks, tying parades together nicely with that aesthetic. For our architectural style, we looked at a lot of American housing, considering how the walls and roof pieces work together and then how to fit those with our shop layouts.  

The Small Town Theme features new wall sets and roof setups offering versatility with pieces like our wrought iron set. We’ve had a number of Community wishlists wanting a Theme that allows players to create these opening/entrances into their parks. so this was a perfect opportunity to deliver them along with Parades.

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Crafting Rides

Of course, the rides are another essential component of creating a new pack for Planet Coaster 2.

For all our rides, we look to our Community wishlists to see the type of rides that are desired as well as adding our own choices based on the DLC’s scenery, Theme or content. For example, the Electric Trolley ride is an iconic visual and with our new path on tracks feature, felt a perfect addition to the Parades Pack.  

Once we’ve got our list of rides, for flat rides, we look to create them from various reference sources to ensure they’re as authentic as possible. For coasters, we start by identifying the track type and unique pieces as well as designing a coaster car that is true-to-life whilst staying consistent with our aesthetic vision.

This involves balancing real world references with our own in-house Planet Coaster style to create something that's both recognisable to roller coaster enthusiasts, while also looking at home in Planet Coaster 2 parks.

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Planet Coaster 2: Parades Pack Is Coming On 25th June

The entire team has been been hard at work creating the Parades Pack and we can't wait to see the weird, wonderful and creative Parades you make when it launches on 25th June!

In the meantime, keep up to date on the latest about Planet Coaster 2 by following our socials, subscribing to our mailing list or visiting the website.