Authenticity is key for Planet Coaster lead artist Sam Denney.
One Christmas, a young Sam Denney received a Bump and Go: a police car with a flashing light that drove itself around, changing direction when it bumped into something. Most kids would be content with that, but an inquisitive Denney took the toy apart because he wanted to know how it worked. And, luckily, because he’d requested a soldering iron for the previous year’s Christmas present, he was able to put it back together again.
Today, his obsession with how things work continues: both in the motorcycle he tells me is almost always lying in pieces in his garage, and in his work on Planet Coaster, Frontier’s deep, customisable theme park sim. As I talk to Denney he builds roller coasters on a blank Planet Coaster park, zooms in, and explains how they work in incredible, excruciating detail. Most of it goes over my head, but his enthusiasm is strangely infectious.
One he builds is a faithful replica of a classic coaster that’s a hundred years old, and he focuses the camera on the red leather seats, taking great pride in the fact that you can see the ‘bum prints’ of the thousands of people who have ridden it over the years. But the detail in Planet Coaster isn’t just superficial: the mechanisms that actually operate the rides are completely accurate, and they prevent players from building anything that wouldn’t work in real life.
Denne historien er fra January 2019-utgaven av PC Gamer.
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Denne historien er fra January 2019-utgaven av PC Gamer.
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BITING BACK
The tooth is out there in adventure TEETH OF GLASS
SMOKE ALARM
THE INVISIBLE SMOKE FACTORY is back in a Flash
MECH ME OVER
Move over Mario, here's mech-based platforming in ARMORED SHELL NIGHTJAR
"I like Pillars of Eternity better than Baldur's Gate III"
PILLARS OF ETERNITY deserves a bigger space in the CRPG pantheon
"A harrowing dark fantasy about hapless, bright-eyed children"
Spelunking into hell with MADE IN ABYSS: BINARY STAR FALLING INTO DARKNESS
THE IMMORTAL LOCK
A massive, meaty game in a single horrific Quake map.
NEW MANOEUVRES
Building a dedicated sim racing space in an average family house
OVERWATCH 2
Save me space girl.
REET GOOD TIME
THANK GOODNESS YOU'RE HERE is a riotous recreation of Yorkshire
THE PLUCKY SQUIRE
How many games let you make friends with a MtG card?