Even the bathrooms and ATMs deliver money directly into the kitty. A gift shop stands right at the park exit. A central retail hub in the middle of the park is supplemented by snack shops placed at calculated locations around the rides, ensuring guests never have to walk far to spend more. Being thoroughly unscrupulous, I nickel and dime these suckers at every opportunity. This requires a diverse set of attractions - massive, exhilarating coasters for the teenage thrill-seekers, smaller, cheaper rides perfect for young kids, and of course lots of restaurants and gift shops where their parents can buy overpriced food and merchandise. After researching new types of rides and marketing, I decided to go after the entire family market, much like a Cedar Point or Six Flags. As the park director my main job duty is to manipulate visitor behavior to spend more money, which they are quite happy to do if given the proper incentives. Learning the many, many mechanics of theme park ownership took longer than I expected, but once I got the basics down, 'Planet Coaster' revealed a huge, thorough, and finely crafted suite of sim tools.
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Even the tooltips are watery, limited mostly to how to rotate the camera and not things like actual roller coaster construction. The campaigns are strings of themed, partially constructed parks with a few variables and open-ended, unimaginative objectives, usually along the lines of "make money" and "attract visitors". Learning in 'Planet Coaster is on a trial-by-fire basis only, it seems. I hopped into the campaign to learn more and continued to be disappointed.
![small rollercoaster planet coaster steam small rollercoaster planet coaster steam](https://cdn.pocket-lint.com/r/s/1200x/assets/images/154264-games-review-hands-on-planet-coaster-console-edition-preview-screens-image3-cdmtvzn1hi.jpg)
This closely mirrors the tutorial in their 'Elite', also a game with a very high skill threshold, but 'Planet Coaster' has fewer videos and no missions to speak of. The game's tutorial mode is paltry, consisting of links to three YouTube videos where Frontier has narrated some basic gameplay elements. For most playthroughs, the goal is to accumulate more money and craft bigger, better attractions and rides.
![small rollercoaster planet coaster steam small rollercoaster planet coaster steam](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/planet-coaster/images/e/ee/Connie_Express.jpg)
While the roller coasters are important, the entire visitor experience and financial profile of the park can be micromanaged, right down to the marketing campaigns and how many condiments go on the snack shack burgers. The formula can be applied to almost anything, from cities to lemonade stands to camgirls, and in the case of 'Planet Coaster' it's an amusement park. Tycoon games are typically simulations where the player is the invisible, mute director of a business.