Planet Coaster

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Planet Coaster
Website URL: https://www.planetcoaster.com/

Planet Coaster is the future of coaster park simulation games.

We’ve created a living world where every guest is an individual with their own personality and money in their pocket. We’re giving you limitless freedom to build rides and scenery piece by piece, and to seamlessly blend them with your own hand-sculpted terrain. We’re building a connected global village where everyone can share in your creativity. And that’s just the start.

We hope you’ll join us to dream, build and share the ultimate coaster parks in Planet Coaster.

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Announcement Trailer

Planet Coaster is being developed by Frontier, the studio which gave us the Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 (but not 1 & 2 or the upcoming RCT World) and more recently Elite: Dangerous.

Its currently in development, with early access available around March 2016 (£49.99) with pre-order (£19.99, discounted) available also but with no known estimate for release.

Theres been a little discussion about the title in the RCTW thread here, and what little they've shown does seem positive and the original RCT titles are still very popular with fans of the Theme/Sim/Tycoon genre.

Side note
If you're simply reminiscing for RCT's of old, rather than fancy shiny 3D versions to bring back those warm fuzzy feels, there is a game called Parkitect (Trailer | Website) which is a spiritual RCT HD remake of sorts, which is in development. Also OpenRCT2 is looking to do what OpenTTD did for fans of Transport Tycoon Deluxe (and likely other Open Source remakes).

It seems like Rollercoaster sims are making a comeback!


---- August 2016 Update ----

Planet Coaster will be available to pre-order from Steam on August 25th, for £27 for the basic game, £30 for the 'Thrillseeker' version which adds beta access, soundtrack, sketchbook and some other minor cosmetic items. ).

The game has also been announced for release on November 17, 2016. After this point, the game will be sold at the higher price of £30 for the standard version.

If you pre-order from the Frontier site before the 25th you'll eventually receive a steam key for the Thrillseeker edition, and thats still at the original £20 price too. IIRC refunds are available from Frontier on the game itself up until release, so if you dont like the beta you can cancel. Steam may well have different rules, they may count the beta access gametime as part of the 2h limit on refunds. Check before you purchase if its a concern.
 
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Dev Diary - Part 1

Having just watched the Dev Diary im really impressed with what they're showing, the little bits that they've done (are working on) already.
The characters are really nice, simple but detailed, individual, and their animations convey personality really well.
What really impressed me was the visitor pathing system, the debug display for how they move and interact with each other was great. Coupled with the character animations to express their mood, it looks very good.

Those sort of technical demonstrations really appeal to me (for what its worth, i loved the SimCity tech videos too - so what do i know!) because I like being able to understand how it does things, genuinely, not what it tells you - ie fudging stats, teleporting things etc. These silly little things go a long way towards explaining to me the developers level of interest and effort towards the simulation. It doesnt make a bad game any better, but its reassuring knowing this is the level of detail they're working towards.
 
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If the Rollercoaster building and physics are as enjoyable as the old RCT games I'll be all over this. Especially if you can ride the coasters! :D

Will be looking at Openrct now it's been linked here though for the blast of nostalgia!
 
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Correction, Frontier only made RCT3... which was the worse. :p

Really? I thought they'd done all of them :o I've always gone back to #3 because of it being the most recent and dont recall 1 or 2 being better, to the extent that everyone seems to refer to #3 like its the ugly duckling of the series (without the transformation) :D

Thats got me concerned a little, if the only one they were involved in is considered the poorest in the series. That said, its the end game they'll be judged on, and use past performance for things like DLC and patching issues.

Updated the OP, doesnt sound quite so impressive now :D
Its odd, cos in the sub-reddit the description starts "Planet Coaster is the next evolution in coaster park simulation games from the team behind the genre’s benchmark.".
I dont know who made that claim, its very similar to the statement on the sites homepage (its the quoted text in the OP) and i ended up using the version on their own site as it just read better to me, it could be a fan made that 'benchmark' claim, it didnt seem unreasonable when i was under the false impression they'd made all the RCT games released to date.
 
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I've always been disappointed by RCT3, hopefully they make a better job of this.

I still think it's really tight between this and RCTW. Obviously once we see some proper gameplay footage of PC, we'll have a better idea of where it's at. All we really know right now is that the graphics are cartoony and they have concentrated on AI for the visitors.


I've been playing OpenRCT2 over the past few days and loved it, some of the little improvements they've made to the game make it even more playable. Would definitely recommend checking it out.
 
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So these are the available buying options for Planet Coaster right now.

http://planetcoaster.mikehagendoorn.nl/

Is it just me or are they just seemingly ripping people off right now? £30 more just to play the 'beta' version. £25 just to get early access to 'dev diaries' and 'game devolpment updates' (you don't even get the game with this option).

People go mad at game devs for releasing 'DLC' packs or 'Season Packs' for a year etc yet these guys are charging £30 extra just to play the beta.
 
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So these are the available buying options for Planet Coaster right now.

http://planetcoaster.mikehagendoorn.nl/

Is it just me or are they just seemingly ripping people off right now? £30 more just to play the 'beta' version. £25 just to get early access to 'dev diaries' and 'game devolpment updates' (you don't even get the game with this option).

People go mad at game devs for releasing 'DLC' packs or 'Season Packs' for a year etc yet these guys are charging £30 extra just to play the beta.

The reason for the £25 'Coaster Head' with no game, is because it was added for the people who wanted both the early access (game but no gimmicky items) and the coaster head package (game & gimmicky items but no EA). So this is basically a booster/add-on to create an 'early access coaster head' for those who wanted.
I caught a thread on Reddit for people asking them to do this, and i thought they'd said they'd also do a EA-addon too (EA access, no game) for those who bought the coaster head but want EA.
 
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