When comparing Planet Coaster vs Stardew Valley, the Slant community recommends Stardew Valley for most people. In the question“What are the best PC games for kids?” Stardew Valley is ranked 6th while Planet Coaster is ranked 12th. The most important reason people chose Stardew Valley is:
Stardew Valley is a very simple game where you're free to do anything and everything at your own pace. This includes building your farm, planting and harvesting crops, and exploring the world among many other things. It will feel enjoyable no matter how fast or slow you do it. This coupled with the colorful/pleasing art style and the great soundtrack makes it an extremely pleasing experience.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Powerful terrain tool that allows 3D scultping
The terrain tool is very powerful, and addition to allowing for changing the terrain height, you can also pull out horizontal jutting terrain and cut in caves in any direction with pull and push tools. An example of this in action is a sample where Mount Rushmore was created using entirely in game tools.
Pro Developers are active in and listen to the community
Pro Powerful building creator
The building designer has many construction assets that are customizable to be any color and provides an amazing amount of customization by allowing you to intersect parts and rotate them in any orientation without having to worry about clipping.
The building system has a compromise between grid based and freeform construction, in that the first object you place down creates a grid around it that you can build to but you can go off grid whenever you need to.
Pro Well put together undo system
The undo system has a long memory and tracks even small changes making it easy to fix mistakes.
Pro Made by many of the developers of RCT2 and RCT3
Pro Construction system doesn't restrict you in any way
You can clip building objects together if you want to get a specific look that requires it, or you can make floating islands if you feel like it, allowing you to create whatever fantasy or sci fi theme you desire.
Pro Steam Workshop support breathes more life into the game every day
Anyone can upload their buildings and rides to the Steam Workshop, allowing for an potentially infinite amount of items to build in your game. Giving players a place to get new content, that's user created, you have near-unlimited possibilities for how to create each park you choose. This gives many players, who find creating new rides difficult, a way to make each new park fun and exciting, as well as giving creators a way to share their work. Due to this Workshop Support, and the hundreds of rides and buildings created by users already, the life of this game is near endless, with new ideas and new way to build popping up every day.
Pro Fully customizable shops
The shops in the game are purposefully made without a facade so you can customize them however you want. If you aren't interested in customizing your own, you can also download pre-built ones from the community workshop.
Pro Real time lighting system
Lights in game light up surrounding scenery in real time making the game's night time scenes look absolutely gorgeous. Lighting objects can also be customized to be any color and come in spotlights and other kinds of lights allowing you to make the exact ambiance you want.
Pro Visitors have intelligent behavior
Visitors come to your park in groups of friends or family and walk around with each other, and they'll dance when they hear music, hold hands, and gather around performers.
Pro Every game theme has a backstory that helps immerse players further
The themes in the game aren't simply generic assets, but there's actually in-game lore created for the different entertainment characters, as well as stores and scenery, adding extra realism and depth to the game assets. Due to this, each park and asset has a fuller and more rich background, allowing players to get even more lost in this experience than in any other theme park builder yet.
Pro Very fulfilling to play
Stardew Valley is a very simple game where you're free to do anything and everything at your own pace. This includes building your farm, planting and harvesting crops, and exploring the world among many other things. It will feel enjoyable no matter how fast or slow you do it. This coupled with the colorful/pleasing art style and the great soundtrack makes it an extremely pleasing experience.
Pro Great soundtrack
When you work on your farm, go fishing, explore or just walk around the town you'll be accompanied by a really nice soundtrack. It's sometimes upbeat, sometimes soothing, and sometimes even melancholic, with every track matching each location and season perfectly.
There's also a wide variety of instruments used, including a piano, accordion, banjo, synths, and many others. This allows you to listen to the soundtrack for hours without getting tired of it. Sometimes it's very hard to believe Stardew Valley and its soundtrack was produced by just one person.
Pro A great mix of genres
While Stardew Valley is primarily a farming simulator, it also has social interaction elements and combat elements.
The social interaction elements allow you to interact with people around the town. You can befriend them, get quests from them, hang out with them, and even find a significant other to go out with and eventually marry. It can be very addictive to max out your relationship with everyone.
The combat elements are introduced when you unlock the dungeon, allowing you to battle creatures such as slimes, golems, and even mummies. While the combat is pretty simple, having you just swing your weapon, it's very satisfying to whack away at enemies.
If farming ever starts feeling stale you can try either of these to mix it up, allowing you to keep the game fresh for a longer time.
Pro Great freedom in designing your farm
When creating your own farm you aren't just limited to plowing fields for planting crops. You can also dig wells, put down fences, and even build various structures such as barns or stables. This allows you to build a farm that firmly matches your goals and sense of aesthetics.
Cons
Con Very large parks can lead to slowdown
The game currently isn't fully optimized to fill a large park completely without major frame rate drops.
Con Being unable to place decor and utility pieces on even slight hills is largely annoying
While pathways can be built on small hills, you will be unable to place miscellaneous assets without the use of the terrain tool. The game allows you to place buildings on these hills, however you cannot place any trashcans, benches, or any decorative piece down, as the game requires them to be build on squared-off pieces of land. Due to this, litter will pile up and the attractiveness of your park will decline unless you hire more leaning staff to pick up the excess trash, or completely undo your work and flatten the terrain.
Con Takes forever to build anything good
Yeah there's room for creativity if you have endless patience. The building is frustrating though. Only -certain- pieces will align with each other leaving you struggling to place rows of fences in a way that doesn't look obviously haphazard, and so many other things too like signs, hedgerows, lots of decor that has loads of potential but ends up looking wonky. And because the building pieces are really basic you have to spend ages building each individual scenery item if you want it to look anywhere near as good as the stuff that's already there when you load a scenario. If you don't have that patience, your parks may end up looking crap and this might make you quit out of frustration.
Con Park management system is not very sophisticated
The management options in Planet Coaster does not add much on top of the developer's previous game, Rollercoaster Tycoon 3. This means it doesn't require much work or management tweaking to get a park making money, and if you allow time to pass quickly you can just wait and let your cash reserves rise.
Con Only for PC
If you have a Mac or a Linux then you cannot play this game without BootCamp, Wine, etc.
Con Can get really repetitive
Living on a farm is a lot of work, so you'll have to repeat the same tasks quite often. This includes tilling land, planting seeds, chopping trees, and many other farm related activities. While it's normally pretty fun and relaxing, it can get incredibly tedious during long play sessions, especially if you're just trying to progress.