Planet Coaster 2 is a complex but colourful park builder | Hands-on preview

I’ve never been particularly entrepreneurial. I don’t have a competitive spirit, and I’ve never been a fan of the idea of fleecing the general public, and so most management sims are lost on me a little. There are generally two exceptions to this rule: city sims and theme park builders. The former because it’s just weird fun to watch your districts grow like gardens, and the latter one because there’s always a great sense of wonder. But, as I found when spending a little hands-on time with Planet Coaster 2, the more wondrous they get the more complex their systems (see also Park Beyond).

Planet Coaster 2 felt a little overwhelming for the hour or so I spent with it, having been invited to a remote hands-on preview with developers Frontier, but had I spent more time with the first game it might have been different. And this is also not a complaint – the complexity is in service to insane levels of detail, customisation and creativity.

The conceit behind the sequel is that your park is in direct competition with a hi-tech, cash rich rival with whom you inexplicably share land. Much of your objective list therefore involves creating rides with a high Prestige level, in order to outshine the other park. In the campaign scenario I played, the focus was on designing a pool complete with a couple of flumes, which had to be safety tested and open to the public in order to raise my park’s rating.

It sounded super easy, but in practice was anything but. It’s not that Planet Coaster 2 is fiddly, per se; it’s more that the UI is doing some serious heavy lifting, and being dropped in the deep end with no tutorials and a load of icons, menu screens, building commands, and not a huge amount of money felt immediately daunting. I managed it, eventually, with a little guidance from the devs, but it wasn’t as straightforward as just dropping things on the map. For a start, you need to path everything. And your paths have to connect. Your guests won’t mind chucking rubbish on the floor but they draw the line at walking on grass.

If you build rides you need to power them with generators, be they electrical or solar. You also need to safety test everything, build facilities for the guests and staff, hire entertainers and construct shops to keep everyone spending money. A quick glance at various star screens confirmed that Planet Coaster 2 will be a management behemoth at launch, but luckily I didn’t have to worry too much about the minutiae. My goal was clear of not simple, and I eventually cheated my way through to raise my rating by spamming prestige-postings scenery items.

In the long run, this won’t work. It got me a Bronze rating and “completed” the hands-on demo, but if I was continuing I’d have some serious issues with angry guests not reaching the rides because of the careless placement of artificial islands, and would probably have to replace the path that let the staff exit their toilets.

I didn’t spend a lot of time in the sandbox mode but this is where you’ll really be able to use your imagination and go a little nuts. Unlimited funds and space will allow you to build the splash park or rollercoaster extravaganza of your dreams, and also let you experiment and practice with different techniques for overcoming campaign challenges.

Perhaps most impressive, though, was the detail present in everything. From the flow of the crowds to the lovely water physics, zooming right into ground level allows you to appreciate all of this up close. You can activate heat maps to monitor your park’s performance, or highlight individual guests to get a feel for what your park is lacking.

Hiring and placing staff and entertainers, adjusting the cost of each ride and item sold, and monitoring maintenance issues to avoid accidents are all part of the fun, and if you’re the kind who likes their sims to be deep and complex, Planet Coaster 2 is likely to thrill you over and over. With a few months to go before launch, Frontier Developments has time to streamline some of the more complex elements, but even if they don’t, they have a competent, colourful, and moreish park builder on their hands.