Comparing my designs to the pre-made coasters that were getting riders, the only significant difference seemed to be size. Even if the Excitement heatmap said that more than half of my track had an Excitement rating above 10, even if I switched out the slow cable lift with a linear synchronous motor launch - at great cost - to minimize the time spent getting up the first hill, I’d often end up with Excitement ratings below 1. “While my first couple designs had some admitted flaws, like a maximum lateral force of 48 times Earth’s gravity, even my later, more refined designs ran into issues where I couldn’t seem to make the Excitement level go up to save my life. The array of possibilities available just from remixing the stock items is gargantuan, and the pool of bits and pieces is already expanding through Steam workshop, which is easily browseable by a well-organized, responsive interface from within the client. Fine control, such as setting custom angle-snapping and widths for paths, can almost seem overwhelming at first, but ultimately allowed me to tweak every square foot of my park to look precisely how I wanted it, down to the smallest details. I used simple keyboard shortcuts to place, reposition, resize, recolor, and edit gift shops, ice cream stands, coasters, carousels, and walkways. The basic routine of building and running a park manages to be more straightforward and intuitive than its extreme versatility would suggest.

A huge diversity of rides and attractions team up with a nearly absurd level of terrain, structure, and coaster customization options so effectively as to beg the question: where did this type of game go for so many years? It’s still far from an interesting economic simulator, and it’s definitely wanting for certain types of buildings, but many of these weaknesses are likely to fade over time thanks to the shrewd inclusion of full mod support. Planet Coaster is just about everything I could have asked for in a modern resurrection of the theme park sim genre - and then some.

Planet coaster xbox