Oct 27, 2016
Planet Coaster - BrettC_Frontier
Hi coaster friends,
Planet Coaster’s beta is just around the corner – until now the alpha builds you have been playing have focused mainly on creative park building, with Alpha 3’s Steam Workshop integration powering the sharing of community created assets.
The beta release is the biggest step forward the game has ever taken. A lot of the features and content you’ll be seeing for the first time have been worked on from very early in the project, as we close in on the release of what we believe is the best coaster park sim ever – sophisticated, challenging, engaging, and fun!
Simulation Evolved
As our Dev Diary #5 will explain, at the heart (or the head) of our ‘Simulation Evolved’ approach is the ‘guest brain’. This delivers the most sophisticated individual character simulations ever – each park guest has their own thoughts, feelings, desires, and most importantly their own money in their pocket.
Every change you make will affect your gameplay like never before, and in order to build your park empire you’ll need to create great rides, layouts, facilities, amenities, and parks to persuade your guests to part with their hard-earned cash.
Up for the Challenge
In the beta, coming November 9, we’ll be including two scenarios to test your park design and entrepreneurial skill. One easier and one more challenging, with the remainder of the scenarios being released at launch on November 17.
The beta will also bring in three different challenge mode difficulties to explore, along with in-game awards to make sure your triumphs are always rewarded.
Take it from the Top
Dev Diary #6 will explain the management tools available to you to meet every challenge in your own unique way.
There’s a new park management dashboard which brings a real-time overview of your parks’ performance, and a notification system to give you every detail you need.
You can run your business your way by manually opening and closing your park and selecting the park’s opening times. Set your park admission pricing including family tickets and balance this against the cost of your rides individually. Offer fast passes to your guests or use a combination of all of these methods – you have complete freedom over your park’s pricing structure.
Money makes the world go round and every park manager worth their salt has been in need of financial assistance before. The new loan system lets you inject more capital into your park but be careful, different loans will come with different interest rates so you’ll need to be shrewd!
You can research specific fields in which to gain and unlock new rides, shops and content for your park, and Planet Coaster’s flexible marketing campaigns let you use wide reaching campaigns to bring the visitors flocking in, or focus and attract the specific groups and ages that perfectly suit your specialist coaster park.
At the heart of every great park are great staff, and Planet Coaster’s staff are as highly ‘evolved’ as our guests. Their own sophisticated ‘staff brain’ simulation gives you great new ways to manage your staff work areas and responsibilities. We’ll share more details about those soon.
Make sure your employees are happy by reviewing their pay, managing their workload and investing in their future through training in order to run your park as effectively as possible. You can choose to send out mechanics to either maintain and repair your rides, or pre-emptively refurbish your older rides to give them a new lease on life.
Planet Coaster Live streams!
We've still got loads more to share with you over the coming weeks. Keep your eyes on our Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram pages for more news and information during the countdown to beta and of course, make sure you join us on October 31 and November 7 for our developer live streams where you’ll see our headline features and announcements for the first time.
Much of the all-important finer detail will need to be played to be appreciated. No matter what you’re doing within Planet Coaster, from the layout of your park, your amenities, the scenery you use, even down to your color selection of items - all have an impact on the simulation.
Every single aspect of Planet Coaster has been designed from the ground up to put simulation and gameplay at the core of the experience, and set a new benchmark for the genre.
We can’t wait for you to get your hands on it!
Planet Coaster’s beta is just around the corner – until now the alpha builds you have been playing have focused mainly on creative park building, with Alpha 3’s Steam Workshop integration powering the sharing of community created assets.
The beta release is the biggest step forward the game has ever taken. A lot of the features and content you’ll be seeing for the first time have been worked on from very early in the project, as we close in on the release of what we believe is the best coaster park sim ever – sophisticated, challenging, engaging, and fun!
Simulation Evolved
As our Dev Diary #5 will explain, at the heart (or the head) of our ‘Simulation Evolved’ approach is the ‘guest brain’. This delivers the most sophisticated individual character simulations ever – each park guest has their own thoughts, feelings, desires, and most importantly their own money in their pocket.
Every change you make will affect your gameplay like never before, and in order to build your park empire you’ll need to create great rides, layouts, facilities, amenities, and parks to persuade your guests to part with their hard-earned cash.
Up for the Challenge
In the beta, coming November 9, we’ll be including two scenarios to test your park design and entrepreneurial skill. One easier and one more challenging, with the remainder of the scenarios being released at launch on November 17.
The beta will also bring in three different challenge mode difficulties to explore, along with in-game awards to make sure your triumphs are always rewarded.
Take it from the Top
Dev Diary #6 will explain the management tools available to you to meet every challenge in your own unique way.
There’s a new park management dashboard which brings a real-time overview of your parks’ performance, and a notification system to give you every detail you need.
You can run your business your way by manually opening and closing your park and selecting the park’s opening times. Set your park admission pricing including family tickets and balance this against the cost of your rides individually. Offer fast passes to your guests or use a combination of all of these methods – you have complete freedom over your park’s pricing structure.
Money makes the world go round and every park manager worth their salt has been in need of financial assistance before. The new loan system lets you inject more capital into your park but be careful, different loans will come with different interest rates so you’ll need to be shrewd!
You can research specific fields in which to gain and unlock new rides, shops and content for your park, and Planet Coaster’s flexible marketing campaigns let you use wide reaching campaigns to bring the visitors flocking in, or focus and attract the specific groups and ages that perfectly suit your specialist coaster park.
At the heart of every great park are great staff, and Planet Coaster’s staff are as highly ‘evolved’ as our guests. Their own sophisticated ‘staff brain’ simulation gives you great new ways to manage your staff work areas and responsibilities. We’ll share more details about those soon.
Make sure your employees are happy by reviewing their pay, managing their workload and investing in their future through training in order to run your park as effectively as possible. You can choose to send out mechanics to either maintain and repair your rides, or pre-emptively refurbish your older rides to give them a new lease on life.
Planet Coaster Live streams!
We've still got loads more to share with you over the coming weeks. Keep your eyes on our Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram pages for more news and information during the countdown to beta and of course, make sure you join us on October 31 and November 7 for our developer live streams where you’ll see our headline features and announcements for the first time.
Much of the all-important finer detail will need to be played to be appreciated. No matter what you’re doing within Planet Coaster, from the layout of your park, your amenities, the scenery you use, even down to your color selection of items - all have an impact on the simulation.
Every single aspect of Planet Coaster has been designed from the ground up to put simulation and gameplay at the core of the experience, and set a new benchmark for the genre.
We can’t wait for you to get your hands on it!
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Tune in today at 19:00 BST (11:00 AM PDT / 14:00 EDT) for Workshop Wonderland! Bo will take a look at some of our favourite submissions on the Steam Workshop! Joining Bo for tonight’s episode is none other than Head of Animation, Nick Rodgers, who will be sharing with us some of his favourite Workshop items!
