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Planet Coaster 2
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Embracing boundless creativity - Planet Coaster 2 Interview with Frontier Developments
We spoke with executive producer Adam Woods to learn more about the Career and Sandbox and the various other intricacies present in the simulation sequel.
Audio transcription
"Hello everyone and welcome back to another Gamereactor interview.
Today, well actually you probably recognise who I'm with because me and Adam actually spoke relatively recently all about Planet Coaster 2. So Adam, first of all, it hasn't been that long since we last spoke."
"How are you? How's things been?
It's been a very exciting few weeks, Ben. We're now obviously talking more publicly about Planet Coaster 2.
Really exciting times to finally start showing everyone what's going on and what we've been working on here.
So far the reaction has been very, very positive, which is really lovely to see."
"Very exciting nonetheless. I've had a chance to just play a bit of it. We'll get into that in a moment.
But before we do that, Frontier, you guys have been really busy. You've done so much as of late.
Planet Coaster, Planet Coaster on console, Planet Zoo on console.
We've got F1 Manager Games, New Jurassic World coming up in the future."
"How do you go about managing all these different projects? What's it like over at Frontier doing all this?
It's a really exciting place to be because of all those projects.
Being able to witness and see the other games coming along and getting released and going down so well as they have.
It's lovely. Luckily for me, I only have to worry about my project, Planet Coaster 2."
"So that's good. I can just concentrate on that.
But yeah, what an incredibly creative and vibrant place I get to work at. It's lovely.
So last time when we spoke, we focused largely on the big new feature that's going to be in Planet Coaster 2, which is the water parks.
But as I just mentioned a moment ago, I've just had the chance to dive into a bit of the game."
"Check out a part of the career mode. So tell me a little bit about the career mode this time around, Adam.
What do you have in store for players looking to experience Planet Coaster this way?
Well, it's a narrative driven story mode.
You'll get to play along with a few cast and different characters that will come along on the journey with you and sort of direct you in different ways."
"Obviously, it's going to have a lot of charm and fun that's very much a part of the Planet brand.
We're really excited to see how players will attempt the challenges that are going to be presented to them across the narrative.
But also at the early part of the campaign, sorry, of the career, there'll be a tutorial section as well that will help to ease people in."
"So that's kind of a really good place to start your Planet Coaster 2 journey from.
And you guys, I suppose you have a lot of freedom in the way that you want to offer up levels in the career mode.
For example, with the one I've been playing, it's not really about building one park.
It's about building two parks essentially in one area."
"So what sort of limits do you set yourselves when you're creating a career mode level?
It's all about trying to create an engaging challenge for players to overcome.
And then also trying to understand how we can set difficulty across the career mode so that as you progress through the levels and you're growing with the game and starting to understand more about the difference between the water parks and the roller coaster parks and new management features and things, that it keeps you challenged and ready to try and beat the next level."
"And we have a fantastic design team that come up with these kind of paradoxical kind of career narrative choices, as you've seen in here, where on one side of the park you had some limitations.
So that makes you think, well, I've got to get around these challenges, but in a certain way, how am I going to do that?
How am I going to utilize all the tools that I've got?
So it's a really, really interesting way of approaching it and certainly push the designers to make it an engaging experience."
"And going hands on with the game for the first time, it's very clear to me once again that you guys have developed a game here that is packed to the brim with simulation elements that feeds you so much information about the way that your theme park is running.
But at the same time, it seems to be offered in such a way that it's quite intuitive and easy to understand."
"So where do you draw the line when you're going about offering simulation elements, but also at the same time trying to keep it accessible for players?
It's a really good question, actually, Ben.
It's all about trying to sort of provide that authentic feeling of running a park and all the nuance that comes to it."
"And there's new elements for that in Planet Coaster 2 as well.
But as you say, it's about trying to present the information in a readable way and also allow kind of like a nested complexity.
You know, you can kind of get quite a bit of information from a ride info panel just from that first tab.
You get a good overview of it, but then you can investigate more information about it and actually really start to drill down and really tweak the ride or deal with the management side of it as you sort of grow with the game as well."
"And we've got a lot of experience in that with Planet Coaster, with Planet Zoo, bringing these PC games with their big simulations that are running behind it down to a console as well.
So we've utilized that. We've taken some of the learning from there as well and applied it here.
So it's always about trying to have a broad, you know, allow a lot of people in to experience the game how they want to, from someone that just wants to come in and sort of place a rollercoaster blueprint all the way down to someone that really wants to manage money through a park."
"Now, one of the features that I saw in the part of the game that I was playing, but I haven't yet had the courage, should we say, to test it, is the event sequencer. So tell me a little bit about what this is and how it works.
Yeah, well, at its kind of core, it's a timeline editor where you can place different effects and different kind of things from the park onto a timeline so that you can then sync it up. I did a deep dive recently showing it where I had an animatronic fish beastie, his name is, which I can set a certain animation on. And then I wanted to create a kind of water jet sort of curtain in front of him, that sort of classic big splash as he roars up. So I'm able to do that and visualize it on a timeline quite easily and then play the sequence and then add that into the park as I kind of see fit. So really looking forward to seeing what people do with it, because as you may have seen, I'm not the best at the creative side of things. I think some of the comments were questioning me, which is fine, but I can't wait to see what the creative guys get a hold of that, because it's really powerful when you add it with all the other things that we've added as well."
"Now, obviously running a theme park isn't as simple as it might sound. There's a lot of things that go into it.
You have to manage not just the space that you've got available, but the financials, the way that the power is distributed.
What's some tips and tricks that you would give players as they're first looking to build one of their first original parks?
I think, for example, the power management is making sure that you'll need to put a generator down and a distributor."
"The generator will generate the power for you, but then you actually need to distribute that across the park.
These distributors have a nice area of effect and make sure that all the things you want to power are connected.
Make sure you use the info panels to understand how much power is being used by that as well and making sure you keep on top of generating enough power."
"Also, use the park management screens. There's a lot of screens that I think, if I remember rightly, you did start to look into some of them.
There's a lot of information, a lot of extra detail you can find there, particularly the loan page.
You can maybe bump your coffers up if you run out and you really want to build that coaster.
You can get a small loan and maybe help your park along that way as well."
"Theme parks are really complex and also really varied places.
You go to some of the various theme parks around the world, they have all these different themed areas.
Sometimes they are designed to resemble a specific IP or something.
You guys in the past have done a few different branded things, especially with Planet Coaster's DLCs."
"Ben, do you have any idea of things that you potentially would like to bring to Planet Coaster 2 down the line?
Some really hypothetical things, not something I'm saying is going to happen, but something that you would like to bring to the game.
I think right now, Ben, as you've said, there's so much content already in the base game, particularly with themes that maybe we haven't even actually spoken about yet, that are coming in Planet Coaster 2. It's actually about seeing what the guys use those themes up with first of all."
"Because we've seen from Planet Coaster that they then merge two themes together and use pieces across the board to almost create their own themes.
I'm just really excited to see what they do with the things we've got already, let alone what else could be coming down the line.
Final question then, Adam. Water parks were the big addition in Planet Coaster 2."
"What's next for Planet Coaster? What's the next thing that you would love to include?
Go-karts, circuses, perhaps a blending with Planet Zoo, some safari elements? What would you love to do?
Honestly, Ben, the next thing for me is getting the game out into the players' hands and seeing what they make with all the new features and all new creative tools that we're getting in Planet Coaster 2."
"That's what's next for me.
Well, thank you very much for speaking with me, Adam. Planet Coaster 2 is coming very, very soon. Stay tuned for it.
It's coming out in November. And yeah, as we've been talking about here, expect some, you know, thoughts, some gameplay, you name it, all coming to your local GameRants region.
Thank you all for watching. We'll see you all on the next one."
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