Today, on November 17, 2016, Planet Coaster is officially released! Adding to the beta updates earlier this week, the released game comes with all 12 Scenarios and more general balancing and fixes, as well as Steam Achievements and Trading Cards.
We’ve hit so many milestones over the past months, and it’s been a long way from concept to finish, so let’s quickly recap some of the highlights:
At the heart of the game are the park guests. Everything you do, whether it’s management or creativity-based, now has an impact on each individual crowd member. Each of them have their own simulated preferences and needs to ultimately affect gameplay, and new, advanced crowd simulation and path-finding algorithms help with the logistics of guest flow around your park.
Authenticity is key – a huge amount of research and development went into all aspects of the game, something especially noticeable in coasters. For example, the system which automatically designs the correct support structures for wooden and hybrid coaster had to be built with a new rendering pipeline, with so many pieces being on screen at once.
In fact the attention to detail and development effort that goes into each ride, coaster, guest and scenery piece from a technical, visual and audio point of view is an order of magnitude more than any previous coaster park game we’ve worked on.
Piece-by-piece construction gives you the opportunity to build anything and everything you’ve ever dreamed of. Change your parks by theming your areas, create buildings in every style, or add (animated) scenery and customised audio to entertain your guests and up your park and scenery ratings. The unprecedented control and customisation means that you can truly get super creative or be more focused on sophisticated finance and management; whatever suits you as an individual player.
The technology underpinning the game is both advanced and highly useable. The 3D voxel landscape gives terrain that’s completely in your control, the lighting engine ensures that everything you create in your park instantly becomes a seamless part of the whole dynamic lighting environment, and you can now create your own dark rides with full creative control of triggering ride events, lights and audio.
Every single aspect and element of Planet Coaster has been carefully selected and designed to work in conjunction with every other one as an integrated whole.
The tight integration with Steam Workshop has a front end that puts your friends to the fore. It enables creators to share and receive credit for their original designs, and also allows those of us who want to use these fantastic creations to download that content and enhance their parks with those existing blueprints.
It has been a fantastic experience for us at Frontier to have the opportunity to create a new game which we hope sets a new quality bar for a genre loved by so many people – no team could have been better suited to the task or more passionate. It’s taken a blend of the team’s expertise and experience, talent, and deep connection with the community; and for that we must thank you all.
First and foremost, we want to thank the developers for their incredible hard work, passion, and dedication to the project. Everyone at Frontier has contributed to Planet Coaster in one way or another; a true team effort and shared love for the game from the start. Programmers, animators, producers, sound team, designers, artists, QA, publishing team, engine wizards, support team, video editors, and all you other experts: you’re awesome, well done. #FrontierFam
We also want to give a massive shoutout to our forum mods, content creators, and master builders. Thank you for keeping the community an overwhelmingly positive place, where everyone has a voice but no one feels unwelcome. Thank you for making videos or streaming the game, showing it off to your viewers, and spreading the word across your community. Thank you for challenging yourselves and creating the most intricate buildings, for using shapes and items in ways even the devs couldn’t have thought of, and for pushing your creativity to the limit.
Last but not least: thank you. Thanks to every single member of this amazing community for your ongoing support, invaluable feedback, and enthusiasm about Planet Coaster. In the end, this game is for you, the players. You have helped shape the game in so many ways, inspired the devs with your ideas and suggestions, and humbled us with your shared passion for the game. We are honoured to have a community like this one. So thank you for joining us on this crazy and ever-evolving rollercoaster ride!