Planet Coaster 2 shows off water parks and more in 15 minutes of gameplay

With Planet Coaster 2’s big reveal out the way, Frontier Developments is ready to start talking specifics – and it’s now done just that in the first in a series of developer deep dives, showcasing some of the sequel’s new features in 15 minutes of first gameplay.

The big new thing in Planet Coaster 2 is , of course, water – or rather water parks, with the likes of pools, lazy rivers, and flumes. Frontier’s deep dive offered a quick walk through the basics here, noting its sparkly new pools can be carved into the earth using geometric or custom shapes, while body flumes – just like rollercoasters – can be constructed piece-by-piece. Expect to see the likes of plughole, sphere, vertical, and boomerang flume pieces, even a six-person raft flume ride, adding variety to the basic flume styles.

Flumes, like any other ride, can be ridden in first-person, and also have their own excitement, nausea, and fear levels that’ll determine whether guests want to ride them. Also like other rides, they’ll work with Planet Coaster 2’s suite of new customisation options, with players able to assign them colours, pre-defined patterns, and more.

Unsurprisingly, given the focus on creativity over management in the first game, customisation opportunities have been expanded significantly in Planet Coaster 2, with one of the most notable additions being the ability to attach scenery parts directly to coasters and flat rides – which will then appropriately animate in tandem with whatever they’re attached to. Expanded tools also help reduce the number of steps required when decorating rides, with players able to quickly mirror customisations or instantly copy them across ride cars.

To accommodate these improved customisation opportunities, rides in Planet Coaster 2 will be much plainer compared to the elaborate versions in the first game – although ride blueprints (which now include flat ride blueprints) will once again enable players to share their creations via the game’s workshop, so less creative sorts still have something nice to plop in their parks.

There’s also a new asynchronous cross-platform co-op mode so players can share a park with a friend – who can then hop in, make some changes or additions, then send it back. It’s not the sort of fully fledged co-op mode seen in developer Texel Raptor’s stellar 2018 theme park sim Parkitect, but it’s something at least. And it’ll work across all three core modes – Career, Sandbox, and Franchise – even enabling friends to co-operate on leaderboard challenges. Oh, and, yes, there’ll be rollback tools to stop your friends from cocking up your creations.

Elsewhere, Planet Coaster 2 massively overhauls the first game’s notoriously finicky pathing tools – its now possible to create large plaza-like pathed areas simply by drawing out their shape – and there are new additions on the management side too. Power, for instance, is now a resource players will need to supply in sufficient quantities in order to keep their parks running, and the new weather system also introduces a few wrinkles, with players needing to provide sunscreen and shade for their water park sunbathers.

In fact, today’s deep dive suggests the majority of new management features will be tied to water parks. Players will also need to hire lifeguards, purchase and maintain water filtration systems for flumes and pools, as well as provide changing facilities, park services to supply pool passes, and set up stores selling inflatable to wring more money out of guests.

Other nuggets of information shared in Frontier’s Planet Coaster 2 deep dive (and subsequent Q&A) included confirmation that hotels will be absent from the sequel, despite the introduction of a new Resort scenery theme, and that the complexity meter will return for console players, limiting the amount of items they can put in their parks. Additionally, saves and workshop creations won’t carry over from the first game, given Planet Coaster 2 is a “full rebuild”.

As a suite of creative tools, then, Planet Coaster 2 is looking extremely impressive – even if this first proper gameplay breakdown does suggest the original’s rather lacklustre management side won’t be notably more robust. Still, that might change as Frontier reveals more Planet Coaster 2 details in the run-up to its Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC release this “autumn”.