The blue pools of Planet Coaster 2 make me want to go to a real water park
Bring back summer, please
If roller coasters are humanity's way of injecting ourselves with a dose of fear just to stay on our toes, then water parks are our way of turning our old enemy, the sea, into a captive entertainer (or is that aquariums?) Either way, Frontier are hoping to cater for all humankind's quirky day-out desires with Planet Coaster 2, by adding water slides and wave pools to the teacups and train rides of their management sim. I had a short go on it, and while there's no chance two hours of hands-on time could give me a full impression of the building game's suite of creative tools, I was quietly pleased with the jungle-themed pool I nestled into the earth. And with the little shark mascot I hired to patrol it.
Much of what made up the first game returns. The focus is still on creating your own rides and attractions from scratch, rather than relying on pre-made roller coasters and water flumes (though those will still exist for those who prefer to pre-plop). That encouragement to piece things together even goes for the snack kiosks and changing rooms, which can be embedded in the shells of other buildings, like clicking together modular toy models. I made some very basic guest facilities, a row of food and drink stalls, and two gift shops housed inside the same modular shell. But judging by the wild creations of the previous game's players (there is an Aliens-themed ride and a concerning number of "euthanasia coasters") you will be able to do much better than I have managed.
There are still a bunch of terrain tools that let you sculpt, chisel, flatten, and smooth the ground to make way for your park's main attractions. I dug out a crater-like hole and scooped away the underground rock to make a shallow cavern. Then raised the earth on one side of my crater to form a shadow-casting mini-mountain. With that all set, it was time to see what splashy pools were possible.
Aside from some preset paddle palaces with kidney bean shapes, and a broad pool perfect for a wave machine, some come with flumes already attached. You can also design your own pools, obviously, penciling an outline along flat ground and choosing the depth, the style of tiles, or whether you want a nice terracotta path surrounding it, for example. A tab with some pool-adjacent extras lets you adorn your splashlands with diving boards, step ladders, inflatable beds, sun loungers, and lifesaver rings.
Life guards are also important to keep each pool's safety rating up, their effective range broadcast along the ground with a big blue zone marker. At this point I began to envy my splish-splashing guests. It was almost painful, in the leaf-strewn winds of encroaching autumn, to design this summer paradise. So I hired a man dressed like a shark to cheer me up (and the guests too, I suppose).
I wish I had delved more deeply into the nitty-gritty, piece-by-piece flume designing, which is where I imagine most returning players will want to focus their efforts. You'll be able to click together slippy slides much in the same way as you can the coasters of the first game. But in my haste I went straight to the pre-built ones. The mega-tall raft rides, the steep and twisty bodyboard tubes, and one familiar water slide with a big distinct bowl at the end, where you spiral around inside before dropping out the bottom, like a tall poo getting flushed down a toilet. I have always loved that one. Although not as much as a lazy river (another attraction you can build).
Sadly, none of these fit anywhere in the surroundings of my pool paradise. So I dipped into the scenery menu and placed a big coral reef rock in the centre of the water instead, then filled everything out with a "tropical vegetation" brush which liberally sprinkled the borders of my canyon with palm trees and shrubs. You're able to scale certain scenery objects too, making them super big or adorably tiny - something that wasn't possible in the previous game. This small addition alone is probably enough to make some Planet Coaster sicko out there sit up in their chair and steeple their fingers with dark glee.
Everything I've described so far was in the open creative mode, with unlimited money enabled. I did also get to try out a campaign scenario, which limited my cash and gave me some objectives (build two pools and attain an "excitement" level from guests, so long as everything I made was restricted to one side of a two-sided plot of land). The first Planet Coaster's campaign wasn't really its strongest point, according to Fraser when he reviewed the game. I didn't play enough of that scenario to see if this was an improvement or not, but I will say that I enjoyed my time better once the pressure of an objective evaporated and I was let loose to create my tropical ravine.
Before my time with the preview build was up, I wanted to see if that traditional feature of theme park games remained intact: the first-person camera. And yup, it's there, allowing you not only to slip around in the toilet bowl or clench with suspense at the top of a tall coaster, but also to peer through the eyes of your employees. As the sharky mascot, for example, or as roller coaster attendant Jibbidy Joe McJoppolly, whose name I invented and typed in with firm decisiveness. Thank god, they let you name stuff - this is the true test of a creativity-coaxing game.
Planet Coaster 2 is coming out November 6th, deep in the realm of, ugh, autumn. I've passed on the previous game, as well as the animal management of Planet Zoo. As someone who shrugs at rollercoasters and feels a vague sadness when faced with any zoo animal, I never took much interest. But I downright love faceplanting chlorinated water after skimming down a plastic intestine in an inflatable donut. It rocks. So maybe the blue skies and bluer pools of this sequel is where I jump in. We'll see.