We are now self-published and nobody is telling us not to make a tycoon game, nobody is telling us to make the tools dumbed down. Some titles we worked on after Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 moved away from that a little bit. We are making a game that has the best creativity and most sophisticated management in a rollercoaster title ever,” he insists. Planet Coaster, however, is a self-published effort, and will be all the better for it, says Watts. It was downloaded over 20m times, which is proof that people love this game."Īll of the games had been created for other publishers, such as Atari, LucasArts and Microsoft. "In 2014, we launched Rollercoaster Tycoon 4 on mobile. It’s an outfit that has worked on multiple rollercoaster games, but they’ve usually been more simplistic console or mobile titles, with the notable exception of 2004’s Rollercoaster Tycoon 3. We’re going more for the old-school type of business management game.”Ĭambridge-based Frontier Developments is the team working on Planet Coaster. He continues: Rollercoaster Tycoon World and Planet Coaster both seem to go for a big, 3D, ‘ride your rides and design a cool looking park’ kind of game, and we’ll happily let them battle it out. As a player, I’m very excited by this development though, and I think the renewed attention for the genre will benefit our own game too in the end.” We had been waiting for a decade for a new entry in the Rollercoaster Tycoon franchise, so that was quite the surprise when their new game was announced just after we had decided to take things into our own hands. Just half a year or so after we announced, we suddenly had two competitors from well-known companies. We all grew up with the Theme Park and Rollercoaster Tycoon games and there hasn’t been a game like these that we thoroughly enjoyed for 10 years or so,” explains Mayer. It was funded via Kickstarter (where it raised 35,000) and is being built by just three people. Parkitect started as a reaction to the lack of decent rollercoaster tycoon games. It’s really cool to see that there’s been more interest in the genre recently, and especially to see games like this from somewhat smaller teams, like Cities: Skylines and Prison Architect.” Sebastian Mayer, the programmer of the game Parkitect, adds: It’s been relatively silent in the last few years – not just in the theme park management genre, but in the simulation genre in general. We like coaster games, and if people are making more then it suggests the genre is back, which makes us very happy.” From our point-of-view, it is unbelievably gratifying and exciting that this genre is back. You’ve got Cities Skylines, Prison Architect, Parkitect, even Rollercoaster Tycoon World, it shows there is a market for them. The tycoon simulation genre is back,” declares Frontier’s creative director Jonny Watts, which is working on the upcoming Planet Coaster. In fact, there are three theme park-style titles on the release slate for 2016, and they’ve all been excited by Skylines’ success. Not only did it prove that the perceived dead simulation strategy genre was anything but, it also highlighted to the world’s publishers that you shouldn’t talk down to your customers.ġ2 months on and another sim strategy sub-genre is making a return: the rollercoaster tycoon game. 2m people bought it.Ĭities: Skylines was an eye-opener. This team had no interest in broader markets, so it made a full, hardcore city simulation game. Then in 2015, a tiny development studio called Colossal Order made Cities: Skylines – a full-scale rival to SimCity.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |