Game Review - Planet Zoo - Franchise Mode

Have you ever had a day out at a zoo and thought to yourself, I'd love to own one of these, if the answer is yes than this is the game for you. Planet Zoo has multiple game modes, including a campaign mode and a sandbox mode, but today I'll be focusing on the Franchise Mode, where you have to create a zoo to keep your animals and guests happy whilst releasing endangered animals back to the wild or selling them to other players for conservation points. The beauty of franchise mode, is you can open more than a single zoo and can share your animals between them all, making it easier to have themed zoos without having to completely start again for each one.

Who let the dogs out? Prairie Dogs to be exact

Creating Your Zoo

Starting a new franchise begins with plenty of options to begin with, and the first choices you have to make are the continent you're going to be based on followed by the biome that your zoo will be set as. The combination of your choices will affect the weather within your zoo as well as the animals that are available more often on the market, however they don't limit you to what you can and can't end up in your zoo. Every continent is available to choose from, and then you have the choice of 6 biomes to set the tone, these being tundra, taiga, temperate, grasslands, tropical and desert. As you can imagine the animals that are more readily available to you are based on animals that are native to the continent and biome meaning you'll have to work a bit harder to gain the finances required to purchase more exotic animals. The game comes with 3 difficulties, with the standard easy, medium and hard set up, in which the harder the difficulty, the more difficult it is to keep animals and guests happy for longer periods of time.

Creating a new zoo

You want animals? We'll give you animals.

You would hope as a zoo game that you wouldn't be limited by a small choice of animals, and fortunately, Planet Zoo delivers the variety and rarity you could ever possibly need. With 76 animals to pick from within the base came, and a further 118 available through downloadable content packs (18 in total to date) you will have as much choice to pick from that even selecting a new animal for your zoo gives you a decision to make. The animals are split into two different types of animals, habitat and exhibit animals. Habitat animals are your big attractions, the full outdoor animal where you can create it's entire home. You can add shelters for them, rocks and trees, water if required, enrichment for food and toys to play with, it's all in there ready to be molded how you want it to look. Exhibit animals are your smaller animals that you would usually find in a reptile house for example, where you don't have full customability of it's home, but you will have to set the temperature and humidity to match whichever animal you choose, and will then have choices for specific layout options for each animal as well. You have two ways to purchase animals within your zoo, either using in game cash that you use to build your zoo, or through conservation points that you gain by releasing animals back to the wild, selling to other players and completing challenges. The more endangered the animal is in real life, the more conservation points it'll gain you when releasing or selling, but cost more to get in the first place. In terms of endangered animal levels, you have creatures from the Least Concern category such as Common Ostrich, Boa Constrictor and Arctic Wolf which go through to the Critically Endangered category which includes West African Lion, Lehmanns Poison Frog and Dama Gazelle.

Baby Wolf, breeding animals to release/sell is vital

Progress the Zoo

As you would expect when you first start the game some animals are out of your budget, so you'll have to work your way up to your big attractions. Fortunately your animals within the game are capable of breeding, which means the babies when they become mature give you a choice. You can either keep the baby animal as your main one and buy a new partner for it, or if the two parents are still going strong and can breed more before their old age, than you have the option to either sell the new animal or release it to the wild. Releasing to the wild will always give you conservation points but not as much as selling, however selling doesn't necessarily mean it'll be purchased as if you're selling for conservation points you're selling to an online community. You can also do a quick trade sale to get cash rather than the conservation points.

Another way to progress the zoo is with research. Research is split into two types, vet research which is more focused on the animals and mechanic research which is more focused on buildings and guest facilities such as food and drink shops. The vet research is actually very important to the happiness and health of your animals, as each new animal you purchase will unlock the research for that creature, through which you will unlock enrichment for your wolves for example, but outside of the individual animal research, they also research diseases meaning your zoo is more prepared for any illness outbreaks within your animals and can resolve those issues much better before your animals die as a result.

Alligator Habitat - having a swim

How Realistic Is It?

The game itself has quite a cartoony feel to it in terms of the guests and people within the zoo, but that is balanced out with exceptional animal models and a lot of detail to the different terrains and plants. The game has a guest happiness rating but based on the graphics they've chosen, it is clear the main focus as expected is on the animals and the wonderful homes you can create for them. The game is also filled with a bustling natural zoo sound as you play, as you can hear the laughs and cheers and woo's of your guests as they view the different animals in your zoo, which also add their own distinct cries to the mix. All in all this creates a relaxing but fun soundtrack to your zoo as you build more and more to create your perfect zoo. In terms of creating the zoo exactly as you like, the controls for doing the essentials is very very simple, however should you wish to be a bit more creative and have much more custom built barriers, buildings or animal habitats than some of those buttons can be a bit more fiddly and a little more complicated to get used to at first attempt. However they do clear up the more you use them and is a simple case of practice makes perfect with it rather than being too much of a hindrance that you choose to ignore the extra details completely.

Exhibits for your smaller animals, scorpions anyone?

Final Thoughts

As I said at the beginning of this review, this is the perfect game for you if you've wanted to create your own zoo and just learn more about a huge range of animals in general. I think this game is very fun whilst also relaxing due to the calmness to it without having a competitive or versus experience. It encapsulates what I believe all zoo's around the world should be about, the animals, working together across the world to create the best and most natural homes for these animals with the aim to get their numbers back up and into the wild where they belong. Planet Zoo has a much bigger range of animals and design elements compared to the original of the genre in Zoo Tycoon, and has positioned itself as the pinnacle of the Zoo Creator Simulator games. I would highly recommend this game for people interested in simulation type games, and anyone who has an interest in animals in general.

8/10

Written by Lee Watson