PLANET ZOO MOBILE PLUS
PLANET ZOO MOBILE SERIES

This is a very smart addition, as it not only helps Planet Zoo become more complex but also makes you feel all warm and fuzzy for making a positive impact on this virtual world. Instead, you need Conservation Credits, which are gained by releasing healthy animals into the wild (bonus points for endangered species) and interacting with other players online. No matter how rich you are, you can’t spend your cash on certain rare animals such as African elephants and western chimpanzees. This does remove a lot of the challenge for your zoo expansion in the latter stages of play, but Frontier Developments has introduced an interesting mechanic to counteract this. Spend too much money early on and you’ll likely see profits take a nosedive into the red zone, but take it slow and steady, and you’ll eventually have a seemingly bottomless pot of cash. It’s admittedly not very tough to rake in millions of dollars, though.

This makes it all the more rewarding when you create a zoo with soaring profit margins and customers singing your praises. From assigning jobs to your staff to altering the prices of soda in the burger kiosks, every little detail can be fine-tuned to your liking. It can be difficult to meet their demands – especially the latter – and frustratingly shifts the focus away from the animals.įrontier Development offers control over even the most granular elements of your zoo. They’ll constantly demand more shops, complain about litter and bemoan the lack of educational content. Keeping your guests content is a far more taxing task. The most difficult aspect of maintaining high animal welfare standards is ensuring exhibits remain clean and disease-free, but that’s just a case of having enough keepers and vets on duty.

Otherwise, creating exhibits to fulfil the needs of your animals is very easy, simply requiring you to implement the correct terrain, plants and shelters until all the slidebars lock into the green zone. This comes in handy to avoid accidentally creating a gender imbalance in a habitat, which can lead to injury-inducing brawls. Frontier Developments has even created a zoopedia, which thoroughly details each animal’s social needs and habitat requirements. Red pandas scramble up trees, wolves form social hierarchies and hippos tread ground underwater. It’s not just the visuals where Planet Zoo excels – each animal also shows impressively realistic behaviour.

PLANET ZOO MOBILE PLUS

It’s hard to be too critical about this, however, considering the number of critters included – plus Frontier Development has already started introducing expansions to plug in the gaps, with polar bears and reindeer introduced by the Arctic Pack. There are some notable animal omissions, though – penguins, kangaroos and sea lions are all missing. Zoom up close and you’ll be able to see the single strands of fur on a grizzly bear, while a greater flamingo will be born with grey feathers and only turn fluorescent pink in adulthood – Frontier Developments has certainly done its homework. There are over 50 beasties available, and all have photo-realistic models with breathtaking attention to detail. The stunning animal animations are a big contributing factor to my Planet Zoo obsession. This is a slow-paced experience with few challenging difficulty spikes, but seeing your zoo expand from a small park to a sprawling animal wonderland is so rewarding that it’s difficult to quit the addiction – I’ve played over 50 hours so far, and I’m still coming back for more. Soothing music plays in the background, swelling to a motivating crescendo when you start to shape out a creature’s enclosure. Remaining true to its roots, Planet Zoo has the same therapeutic charm as its Tycoon predecessors. It’s certainly in safe hands though, as it was developed by Frontier Developments – the team responsible for bringing RollerCoaster Tycoon’s spiritual successor to the modern masses with Planet Coaster. Planet Zoo is everything you could wish for from a Zoo Tycoon successor, even if it isn’t strictly a sequel.

PLANET ZOO MOBILE SERIES

Despite the many ports to modern consoles and handhelds, a true successor sadly never arrived to propel the series forward and satisfy my nostalgic itch. I’ve been waiting for Zoo Tycoon 3 for 16 years.

Planet zoo mobile