The game was announced on 29 January 2015 by Frontier Developments . Originally called '' Coaster Park Tycoon '' , the game was renamed into '' Planet Coaster '' on 16 June 2015 during the PC Gaming Show at E3 2015 . Frontier Developments aimed to turn the game into the company 's second self-published franchise , along with the '' Elite '' series . The game uses an advanced version of Cobra Engine , which is an in-house proprietary engine developed by Frontier previously used by games like '' Elite Dangerous '' and '' RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 '' . Features confirmed for the game include a hybrid spline/piece-by-piece coaster builder , modular structure building , a voxel terrain editor among others detailed through Q&A 's and " Dev Diaries . " On the second live stream , the release date of the alpha was announced . Released on 22 March 2016 , the alpha emphasized on modular building and paths . The alpha contained two themes : " Planet Coaster " and " Pirate " . Although disabled by default , Coaster Building was included in the first alpha through a cheat code
E3 2015
E3 2015
Planet Coaster