Planet Coaster (PC)
Developer: Frontier Developments
Publisher: Frontier Developments
Release: November 17, 2016
MSRP: $44.99

As a child, my favorite vacation destinations have always been amusement parks. My parents would often ask me where I wanted to go, and my unequivocal answer was the popular amusement park nearby. Although I was too little to enjoy even log rides at the time, the parks' festive atmosphere was more than enough. The dreams and fantasies they promised, displayed, seemed eternal.

But as I grew older and became burdened with real life obligations, I realized my childhood dreams did not have to be confined to branded real life establishments. They lived on in my computer, too, in the form of video games!
 

“Spiritual successor” is a common phrase that frequently gets thrown around in creative works and video games. If you stop and think about the word though, it’s a bit odd. Something is a successor if it follows something else - but what makes it spiritual?

It has become common practice for any creative work to beget a barrage of sequels if it becomes successful. In modern society, companies and creators constantly try to maximize profit by keeping to a brand that has proven to work, if at least once. When a movie or a game becomes a massive hit, plans are put together for a trilogy; some studios pump out more or less the same title year after year. We’ve seen it often enough to accept it as a natural part of the industry.

If all these attempts at sequels had succeeded, the artistic world would be nothing but a collection of rehashed works from a popular series. It’s never an easy task to match the original. People like a series for a number of complex reasons. Even successors of the most beloved franchises can flop. That’s how brands rise and fall.

Occasionally, we come across titles that are not official sequels per se, but carry the essence of a certain series. We call these spiritual successors.

Planet Coaster can be considered the spiritual successor of Roller Coaster Tycoon. Drawing from a wealth of experience in theme park simulators such as Roller Coaster Tycoon 3, Zoo Tycoon, and Screamride, Frontier Development has managed to create something above and beyond.

The Tumultuous History of Theme Park Sims

The theme park sim genre itself was on the verge of obscurity. Although it flourished during RCT, the market quieted down substantially as the series dwindled in quality and popularity. The fall from grace was understandable, given that RCT was the alpha and omega of theme park sims; Bullfrog pioneered the genre with Theme Park, but RCT perfected it. Without any meaningful competition, RCT’s absolute reign came to an abrupt end eight years ago with its third iteration in 2004.

It’s no wonder that fans were dying for a new theme park sim to continue the legacy of the RCT series, even though Atari, the publisher of RCT 3, understood the demand and launched three official sequels starting from 2012. The sad fact of the matter, though, was that none of those games should have come out in the first place.

RCT 3D, RCT 4 Mobile, and RCT were utter disasters from a graphical and system standpoint. They all failed at optimization and in-game content. Fans watching these mediocre sequels disgrace RCT’s good name just went back to faithful RCT 2. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

In this pivotal moment, a new game emerged. In Prince Hamlet fashion, biding time while numerous other unworthy contenders fought for the crown, Frontier Developments released Planet Coaster. The heir apparent.

What exactly is the difference between Planet Coaster and the three official successors to the RCT series? It’s worth examining to figure out why fans embraced the new game over the reject sequels.

Hail to the Almighty Sandbox

Building and management games have largely been cast aside when it comes to performance and graphical fidelity, and fans of the genre know how these kinds of games excel at taxing CPUs.

The first and obvious selling point of Planet Coaster is its solid fundamentals. Even with cleaner and more advanced graphics compared to previous theme park sims, the game is reasonably optimized. Since this particular type of game has to process numerous guests, attractions, and shops, many of them take a heavy toll in the optimization department. The aforementioned three RCT games after 2012 were plagued with optimization issues such as low quality graphics and memory leaks.

This isn’t to say Planet Coaster can run on potatoes. But considering how much the sim genre tends to drain CPUs, the game still yields consistent frame rates with only a few adjustments to graphics options. From a technical perspective, one of the telltale signs of a good simulation game is its stable core allocation and diverse graphics options that cater to a wide range of users.

The best thing Planet Coaster has going for it comes from the combination of two factors: the in-game editing tool, and Steam Workshop.

The in-game editing tool works perfectly and unlocks limitless customization possibilities. All theme park sims in the past have included customization elements, down to the most minute details, and Planet Coaster does not completely alter the fundamental framework of building theme parks and harmoniously arranging various objects. It just took everything a step further. Players can customize every object, from a rock on the ground to entire roller coasters, according to their imagination.

Terrain can be freely molded like clay, and objects can be freely attached and detached with each other in all directions and heights. Players will marvel at the level of freedom and ease of use the editor provides in building tracks for roller coasters. It’s like building something with an infinite supply of Legos - no, it feels even more liberating than that. Anything is possible with the game’s advanced editor. I can confidently say that this in-game tool is among the best released this year. I personally hope that other developers take after this exact tool for their own simulation games.

Steam Workshop perfectly complements the experience too. Players can search for buildings and parts they need and share their own creations with the community. Using the Workshop creates the illusion that players from all over the world are building theme parks together. If you’re confident enough to make a few awesome houses and pubs for your new medieval style park, but you’re not 100 percent sure about making castles, then you can simply use one of the countless castle models in the shop and share your own village while you’re at it.

Planet Coaster isn’t the first game that has extensively used the Workshop, but almost all of the previous games used external tools to create content for it. In Planet Coaster, you can share everything you create with the in-game editor, and there is no limit to borrowing what others have created. Even if there are bits and pieces you don’t like, you can simply tweak them to feel right.

Planet Coaster is only limited by imagination. Even now, many architects and builders are working late into the night to create the coolest buildings and parks. Everyone is reaping the benefits and simultaneously contributing to the effort. The name of the main mode isn’t “Sandbox” by accident; the game perfectly embodies the idea.

What Defines a Spiritual Successor?

Planet Coaster has very strong advantages alongside clear drawbacks. Its park management system is rudimentary at best and is limited to activities like borrowing money, advertising, selling preferential tickets, training employees, and adjusting wages. Although the management side of the game is not completely insufficient, it fails to add any structural depth to gameplay.

It also takes a considerable amount of time and effort to become proficient with the editor, the lifeblood of the game. If that's a big turnoff, Planet Coaster may not be the right game for you.

In a different but related genre, there has been another recent spiritual successor of sorts. What Planet Coaster is to RCT, Cities: Skylines is to The Sims. Released last year, Cities: Skylines is considered by many as the only worthy city building sim - let’s just forget all the ones that came after SimCity 4 - and has cooled the ire of fans still angry about SimCity (2013).

The goal for all city builders is to complete a city as a huge system with numerous subsystems underneath. Skylines filled the void for city-building sim fans by deliberately simplifying or outright cutting out a couple of subsystems in order to bring out the best details such as traffic and freight management.

Of course, it’s hard to deny that Planet Coaster and Skylines only succeed in the way they did because the "rightful heirs" fatally tarnished their legacies. If SimCity (2013) or RCT World had been hallmarks of excellence, there would have been no need for Planet Coaster or Skylines. They may even have been treated as illegitimate copies.

One thing to keep in mind, though, is that being a spiritual successor doesn’t guarantee a great reception unless it also improves existing features or offers unique characteristics. This is something both fans and developers often overlook. Neither being a carbon copy title nor adding new flashy features without a solid foundation warrants a purchase.

In this sense, it’s interesting to see how these two spiritual successors have taken the place as the rightful leaders of each genre while using the same approach. Cities: Skylines compromised some details that were key characteristics of the previous SimCity series. What number-crunching traditions Skylines dropped, such as adjusting the number of students and school buses of an elementary school to fit the city’s budget, was made up for with visually intuitive planning and various traffic management systems.

I’d say it’s a form of specialization. While this approach is not without its flaws, it provides a compelling argument that implementing one or two things well makes for a much more fun game than doing a mediocre job of ten things.

Planet Coaster deserves high praise because it feels like a delicate toy that can be set into action, with its endless customization and details. Players can mold anything into anything from heaven to hell. Meager toilet stools. Massive castles that take up half the map. And although the game can’t fully reflect human aesthetic, there's even an evaluation system to commend players for creativity. This is Sandbox at its finest. Planet Coaster is all about encouraging creativity.

All in all, these two games are the end products of developers who fully understood the crucial elements of the simulator genre and the needs of players.

So, what’s the endgame for a good theme park simulator? The answer is the ability to create kickass theme parks full of fantastic atmosphere and unique attractions, just like the ones which we yearn to visit in our everyday lives. Thankfully, Planet Coaster succeeds at this. If you have a basic sense of aesthetics, proficiency with the tools, and perhaps too much time time on your hands, everything - from a castle in a medieval fantasy, to a small town on the western frontier, to a Christmas village in a frozen northern country - is possible.

As a successor to RCT, Planet Coaster doesn’t merely imitate previous success but instead has its own identity and maximizes its strengths. By foregoing some aspects, such as micromanagement and tool accessibility, the game enhanced other aspects beyond expectation. With a reasonable price tag of $45, it is easy to forgive the downsides of this game. Planet Coaster isn’t perfect, but it offers far more than enough to feel good about having bought the game..

The Two Birds of Tradition and Progress

“Spiritual successor” is a nuanced phrase. Hundreds of new action titles - arguably the staples of current mainstream gaming - actively avoid using it, because games nowadays already share so many similarities with each other. Still, people are enthusiastic about the essence of things, whether it’s a piece of art from a certain era, or a game from a forgotten genre. Spiritual successors are living pieces of evidence that prove the existence of development trends in video games.

No matter how many fans and fads there are in a given niche genre, however, developers will be left high and dry unless they continue to evolve. Without progress and improvement, only cold shoudlers will be seen, even to a market's oldest franchise. Planet Coaster's ascension to the throne came through a masterful interweaving of tradition and progress. 

Nowadays, I sit back in my evenings with a beer in hand, watching my own theme park operate at normal speed, just like an enterprising boss looks down at his accomplishments from a high-rise office balcony after an exhausting day. If you are someone who seeks this feeling, you will discover how wonderful modern technology can be.

What are you waiting for? A world of fantasy awaits!

 
Pros

- The most powerful theme park editor ever
- Seamless Steam Workshop integration to encourage creativity

Cons
- Lack of an in-depth park management system
- Visitors are immortal and can no longer be harassed

Overall Score: 85