The return of amusement park manager games

The Game Room
1

Roller Coaster Tycoon 1, 2, and 3 were all extremely popular, well loved games - and then we had a drought of over ten years on amusement park management sims for no apparent reason. There have been a few games with somewhat similar subject matter, but none so loved as the RCT games.

And now, suddenly, in 2016 we’re going to get several.

The best of the bunch will almost certainly be Planet Coaster, made by Frontier, using the same engine they used to make Elite: Dangerous, which I hope it means it’ll get really good VR support. Frontier actually made RCT 3 in 2004, and this game is basically a spiritual successor to that. So 3d, ride your own rides, build your own coasters, manage the park (prices, concessions, staff, etc). View your park through the eyes of your customers and see the park as they would.

They kept the cartoony art style which really fits the game, but added a ton of detail compared to RCT3. Guests are much more detailed and expressive now. The scenery and ride models are very detailed, even to the point of modelling nuts and bolts so everything looks plausibly authentic. The design system is very modular and very flexible. Build your own buildings and scenery, even doing things like designing the structure and look of your own shops, adding any sort of prop to anything else. Effort was made to make stuff like supports for rides build/behave accurately.

They’re going to have some sort of in-game ability to share the rides and buildings and scenery you design, which is great. I hope they design it well, because user generated content is huge in games like these.

They released an alpha a few days ago, so we’re getting videos of where it’s at right now. It has a limited feature set and very limited coasters so far, but there’s a lot of promise in there.

I don’t recommend buying it - it’s $75 compared to the $30 preorder price. I think they just want to get a limited number of super-enthusiasts in there for feedback. It’s due out towards the end of this year.

Here’s a Nerd^3 video from yesterday. If you prefer something less… enthusiastic, here’s one from someone else.

Here is the first of a series of dev blog videos that give insight into what they want the game to be.

Next up is Roller Coaster Tycoon World. This is the official sequel to the RCT series, in that it’s produced by Atari who owns the name. But there’s a lot to be cautious about in this one. It’s basically going after the same gameply as Planet Coaster, and was supposed to come out a year before it, but it’s been through a development mess. The original plan was to develop it from the poor RCT4Mobile game from 2014, but that was much too technically primitive. They ended up scrapping that and handing it off to another developer. When they release some footage that indicated it was actually more primitive than RCT3 from 10 years ago, that second team was fired and replaced with another one. And I think at some point, a fourth developer was brought in.

They delayed it instead of releasing it as shovelware, so there’s hope they’re actually going to do something decent with it, but given that it’s going to come out around the same time as planet coaster and seems to have less promise. It may be the odd man out, but I’m hoping it’ll have some sort of unique feature or different take that makes it a worthwhile game.

If you prefer RCT1/2 to 3 (2d, isometric, more focused on running the business aspects and less focused on riding your own rides), there’s Theme Parkitect. It’s much more technically primitive - a clear indie game - but has a different sort of focus. A lot of people prefer RCT1/2 to 3, so this may appeal to them. Preorders/early access is $15.

In looking into these things, I just discovered OpenRCT, which rewrites and modernizes RCT2. It lets the game run better on modern system, fixes bugs, adds features - I haven’t looked into it too much yet but I may play around with it to hold me over until Planet Coaster comes out.

There’s also Theme Park Studio which I’ve kept an eye on a little bit. It’s not a game so much as a sandbox where you can design a real park in detail, including designing your own rides in a physics-based way. It’s been in early access for 2 years and I don’t know how far it’s come. If Planet Coaster’s design process is as good as it looks, it looks like it may superscede this game (unless you wanted a realistic aesthetic or designed your own rides from scratch), but it was worth mentioning.

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This is all very interesting - thanks for the info! I do love a good amusment park simulator, especially the Gold version of RCT3. We’re long overdue for a new one, that’s for sure.

3

Yeah that Planet Coaster looks amazing. It seems very flexible and detailed on the scenery, the videos showed off some really cool stuff. Not just giant hamburger scenery, but individual burger layers decorated any way you want:D Rotate and place decorations at odd angles, make scenery rise up and down. This has a ton of potential already, and I’ll be keeping an eye on it.

I actually have RCT2 installed on Steam right now, but haven’t gotten into it yet, still playing some other games. But I’m planning on downloading that OpenRCT in the next week or so. RCT2 is one of my favorite games ever, and this promises new stuff and fixes?! Hell yeah, sign me up! ETA actually I’m going to go download it now…

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I watched this video earlier that shows someone making an elaborate themed coaster building showing off some of the construction/scenery tools.

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I remember having a discussion about these types of games with you Beef, we both wondered what the hell Atari was waiting for, and why no one had built a good clone.

Planet coaster seems to be the right blend of fun and simulation for me, but I’ll wait until 1.0.

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Holy crap that video. So awesome.

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I downloaded the OpenRCT project and played the first scenario. I had some trouble reading the text until I figured out how to use the “scale” option in the options menu (in-game) to make the screen bigger. The tool tips are still hard to read though.

The bug fixes and new features are great. I’ll spend some more time with it, but it’s looking great so far. OpenRCT works with any version of the game, disk, GoG, Steam, etc. Once installed I can just run OpenRCT without starting Steam, which is nice.

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Very impressive indeed! I love being able to build all the staging and theming to go with my rollercoasters in things like RCT3 so I know what he’s on about when he says he spent two hours just making the station. :smiley:

Will definitely have to add this one to the “Keep an eye out for” list…

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I went ahead and preordered Planet Coaster. I almost never do that, but in this case, it’s $30 if you preorder now as opposed to $60 at launch. If more games gave a half off discount, it might actually be worth preordering.

Between what’s available now, the competence of the team doing the game, and where they say they intend to go with it, I’m pretty confident it’s going to be very good at the least. It’s pretty unlikely RCTW is going to be the better product, although I may grab that too later if it’s different enough to be worthwhile.

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I just got paid so I went ahead and sprung for that $30 as well.

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When is the release day?

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The Planet Coaster sales pitch is impressive as hell but shows no shots of actual gameplay.

In games like this it’s all about the execution of the interface. How hard is it to, say, plan out a footpath or find room for the swinging ship ride? Much less actually designing a roller coaster, which is not easily done even if the interface is good. If the interface is bad, forget about it.

RCT and RCT2 were classics in part because the interface was relatively simple and offered the user the opportunity to worry about the park (it had its little problems, but nothing too terrible.)

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There’s a ton of videos on youtube of people using the tools to do exactly what you describe.

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True, but you’ve really gotta muck in yourself to get a feel for the thing. I’m looking forward to it.

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Q4 2016, so hopefully about a 6 months.

I posted videos in the OP. They released an alpha to the public so they’re definitely not being secretive about it.

Doing those things is probably actually easier than RCT1/2 because you don’t have to worry about clipping or the strict grid system. Obviously it’s way more flexible.

One thing I appreciate is that they’re making all the scenery noclip, meaning it doesn’t collide with other scenery or the ground. So you don’t run into the sorts of issues where you can’t quite place a piece because the ground is sloped a bit too much, or some other people of scenery gets into the way. You can just build whatever looks good to you without that restriction. It makes the whole thing much less fidgety and more in line with whatever you want.

The guy I posted earlier made a new video where he builds a little street of shops. I really like that shops aren’t their own seperate booth but rather just a piece you can add to other buildings. It lets you make customized buildings for your shops or even little indoor malls if you wanted, instead of just plopping the same booths everywhere.

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Planet Coaster looks amazing. The detail and customization is amazing and it’s only in alpha.

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They need to add a way to visit other people’s parks.

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I want to see the “standard” rides and what kind of customization/tweaking you can do. If there’s lots of options for making your rides unique beyond just different colors or cars, i’m in. It’d be cool if you could pick from different bumper car building/track layouts, different sizes and styles of ferris wheels, maybe different light schemes or even the ability to place individual lights on your rides. Give us some deep customization options for everything!

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I LOVED RCT 3. And I was weirdly good at it; I could create really awesome, successful parks. The Water Park and Zoo add ons were fun too. Weirdly, and I am sure I am alone in this, I hated making my own coasters. I was terrible at it so I would only used the premade ones but the game was still great fun just placing and pricing everything well.

Thank you for the head’s up on the new RCT. I had assumed it was by the same people who made 3. It went from buy to wait and see for me.

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Dont worry, I wasn’t a fan of making my own coasters either - I liked the fact you could, but I was more interested in the “Make as much money as possible from making/having an awesome theme park” aspect than the “spend hours making a single roller coaster” element.