All posts tagged in Frontier Developments
Dec 12, 2019
A free update (1.1.0) is coming to Planet Zoo December 17th, 2019 which includes a large amount of bug fixes, improvements, and many new features such as more heat maps, menus, information panels, and alerts. Alongside this update, you can purchase The Arctic Pack on Steam or the Frontier Store for $9.99 US which includes two new Scenarios, four new Arctic animals, and new building items. See below for the detailed information via the official Developer Journal.
Free Update 1.1.0
- Slow Animal Aging: Slow Animal Aging is a setting that can be found in the Gameplay section of the Options menu, and you can use it to alter the rate at which your animals age: up to five times slower than normal. This mean fewer births and deaths in your zoo.
- Immediate Family on Animal Information Panels: Through this, you will be able to learn of an animal’s parentage, siblings and direct descendants.
- Animal Pack Behaviour: Alphas are stable within a pack structure, and members won’t normally fight unless they are overcrowded.
- New Heat Maps: These Heat Maps involve crime, staff happiness, animal breeding, habitat cleanliness and updates to negative impacts, such as litter and thrown food. This should really help with your zoo’s prestige!
- Improved Social Behaviours: The Ring-Tailed Lemur and Red Ruffed Lemur now have more social interactions when happy and healthy.
- News Feed: This will let you know about important announcements such as maintenance information and news updates.
- Management Updates: This is an alert system that will let you know what’s happening in your zoo. A new High Alert option will let you know when something needs your immediate attention such as animal escapes or if all Keeper Huts are closed.
- Aurora Borealis: Now you can see beautiful in-game Aurora Borealis (the Northern Lights) whenever you look up at the night’s sky in the Tundra biome.
- Ice Cream Costume: An Ice Cream Costume is available to all players to dress up their avatars!
- More Creativity: For those of you that love creating amazing habitats, now you’ll have a complete ice and snow rock set, enrichment items like a snow ball and a Christmas present, new winter foliage, and ice pathing to work with.
Planet Zoo: Arctic Pack
- Two New Scenearios: The mountainous Norway set in the Tundra biome, and the arid Mexico, based in the Desert biome. Complete with their own stories and challenges!
- Four new Arctic animals: the Polar Bear, Reindeer, Arctic Wolf, and Dall Sheep.
- Building Items: there are over 200 new building, scenery, and foliage pieces such as snow and ice sculptures.
I’ve played a little of Planet Zoo on Steam and gave my first impressions here. You can also check out my blooper video of all my building mishaps! I’m looking forward to diving back in the game and creating my own winter wonderland!
- Nov 12, 2019
So far I’m enjoying the improvements of Planet Zoo that Frontier Developments have made since Zoo Tycoon on Steam. However, I wanted to show people playing or currently watching videos not to get too discouraged by the vast amount of building choices and pre-made parks that are all so intimidating. Don’t worry, you’re not alone! I too could not believe how beautiful the parks were and was eager to build some of my own and thought, “this won’t be that hard because I’ve played tycoon games before.” Until I was told to make a fence while playing Career Mode for the first time. I’m still getting the hang of the controls for Planet Zoo, because it’s beautiful and worth it. Although, for now, I’ve added a video below which is a compilation of all of my first attempts and failures for your viewing pleasure.
It’s Hard at First!
At first, Nancy started me off with some pre-builds for my facilities and such. Looking at the amount of choices and possible shapes to utilize to make one building, made me nervous. I was hoping Nancy wouldn’t leave my side any time soon. However, when it comes to fences, you can’t just plop a cage down, you have panels you need to connect. The height also needs to be adjusted according to the specific animals you will be placing inside that habitat. Zoopedia has all of the information, always read Zoopedia. I did eventually learn how to paint the fences different colors but that didn’t really help me at that moment, although it’s a very nice new addition to the game that I’m going to enjoy later.
When I struggled to do the simplest of tasks, everything else seemed so daunting. If I can’t get these controls down, how would I be able to create an entire zoo? Poor Nancy was trying hard to explain things to me and I just wasn’t getting it. This could either mean two things: I’m horribly uncoordinated and terrible at this game, or there’s a very steep learning curve and the controls could have been simplified a lot more. I haven’t ruled either of them out yet since I haven’t gotten very far. It’s probably just me.
Jokes aside, there were some amazing moments of looking at my animals via Camera mode. They’re so majestic and they deserve everything I can afford to buy them. There are a lot of options for items, research, and more, which I’m looking forward to familiarizing myself with!
You can buy the basic Planet Zoo game and/or the Deluxe Edition on Steam right here.
- Nov 10, 2019
What I’ve seen from the developers of Planet Zoo, Frontier Developments, leading up to the Best Simulation Game‘s release, has been very impressive! From the very specific needs and behaviors of all animals to the challenging new modes, you can tell they really put a lot of love into this game! There’s so much more emphasis on animal care and education, including conservation efforts, that has me so excited to be a zoo keeper. I’d like to thank the developers for supplying me with a Steam Key so that I could put my tycoon skills to the test and show you all what you can expect before playing.
Zoo Tycoon Vs Planet Zoo
I’ve been a huge fan of creating habitats and taking care of my animals, all while making sure the guests are happy, for quite some time. I’ve put several hours into Zoo Tycoon back in 2001, which was developed by Blue Fang Games and published by Microsoft. They also went on to make a sequel and several amazing expansion packs. There was just the perfect balance of making the zoo your own and having some guidance with several tools at your disposal.
In 2013, Microsoft, along with Frontier Developments, released a Zoo Tycoon game for the Xbox 360 and Xbox One. I found that game to be hugely disappointing with the lack of animal variety, and almost no layout and design choices for habitats or facilities. For example, you had to place food and water bowls in pre-selected zones. It scaled way too far back on the creative freedom that it became real boring, real fast. However, I could already tell by the Developer Journals that Planet Zoo was going to be a huge improvement and was excited to try my hand at another zoo management game.
When I started to play Planet Zoo, I was already excited at the fact that I could customize my own avatar. Then, I decided to go for Career Mode first as I know I should get some tips before I go off on my own and start from scratch in Sandbox Mode. I could not believe how beautiful the parks were and was eager to build some of my own. It was a little intimidating in fact because there was so much to work with, more than I have ever seen.
Now, not only can you place whatever you want, wherever you want in your habitats, but you can also make everything from scratch. This might make the game harder to get used to at first, if you’ve watched my Planet Zoo Gameplay Bloopers you’ll know what I’m talking about, but it becomes very addictive if you stick with it. Sure the paths and fences are harder to use then they have to be but little changes, such as adding digital boards and speakers for your guests to learn about your animals, makes it worth it.
It is worth mentioning that I lightly touched on the fact that you have to have available power for all of your facilities during my first couple of levels of gameplay, which is also a new feature. Meaning, there’s a bit more to do this time around, similar to Sim City. I’ll be continuing to play Planet Zoo and will write updated articles when I find out how it all goes together! If this already sounds like fun to you, you can buy the basic Planet Zoo game and/or the Deluxe Edition on Steam right here.
- Aug 16, 2019
Planet Zoo has a story-driven narrative featuring a fascinating cast of characters who take you along on a journey across the world!
The developers of Planet Zoo, Frontier Developments, have just announced details about their new Career Mode which includes a main storyline and several characters with unique personalities. If you haven’t read our last article regarding Zookeepers from their last Developer Journal, you can do so here. We here at myPotatoGames are blown-away by the amount of details and realism the creators are putting into the game which is releasing on PC November 5th, 2019. Frontier Developments assure us that the new Career Mode will be different than what you might be used to if you played their Planet Coaster game. See below for the details on the new mode and the first two new main characters from the latest Dev Post.
Planet Zoo’s Career Mode
In Planet Zoo’s Career Mode, you will go on a trip around the world with new characters, exciting objectives, and lots of decisions that can impact the success of your zoos. There’s a bunch of unique Scenarios that follow along a beautiful and adventurous story, written by Graham Goring – and as it’s part of the Planet universe, there will be loads of light-hearted humour and heart-warming moments!
Each Scenario has its own unique challenges, determined by the continent you’re in, the biome you’re utilizing, the weather, the temperature, and of course animal availability. There will be goals for you to achieve (Bronze, Silver, and Gold), which contain gameplay objectives that vary in difficulty depending on how far you’ve progressed through the story – there’s a lot of unique objectives to get stuck in too! Each Scenario will open up with an introduction to your new surroundings by a character; in the first part of the story, you will mainly be interacting with Bernard “Bernie” Goodwin and Nancy Jones.
The New Characters
Bernard “Bernie” Goodwin – Zoo Owner
Bernard is the owner of several zoos and has made it his life’s work to use them to drive positive change, saving endangered species and increasing animal welfare around the world. He is a warm and humorous character (he loves dad jokes!) who cares deeply for all people and animals alike. He sees the good in almost everyone he meets and wants to inspire others to follow in his path. Despite his age, he has the energy and zest for life of a man twenty years his junior!
Nancy Jones – Head Zookeeper
Nancy has worked with Bernie for over thirty years and is a no-nonsense woman with a dry sense of humour. Nancy’s first job as a Zookeeper was actually at one of Bernie’s zoos! She’s gotten to where she is through hard work, common sense and passion for her job; a talent Bernard quickly recognized, leading him to promote her to Head Zookeeper – meaning she now leads the teams and expects them to have the same high standards as she does!
Planet Zoo has also recently been nominated for Best Simulation Game at the Gamescom Awards 2019! You can read all about Gamescom and how to watch the live-streams this coming Monday, August 19th, 2019. Frontier Developments say they will be demonstrating their new Career Mode, Gamescom Gameplay Demo, on Tuesday, August 20th, 2019 at 7PM BST on YouTube. Sandbox Mode is always fun and the best way to get super creative but we can’t wait to find out what kind of goals there will be for our zoos!
- May 30, 2019
Planet Zoo is currently being developed by Frontier Developments. They probably need no introduction as they also are the ones behind Planet Coaster and Zoo Tycoon. The game is a management and simulation game about creating your very own zoo. The game is set to release sometime in the Fall of 2019 for PC. You can view the announcement trailer and some information about the game with us here.
Another Planet Zoo Developer Journal has been posted, where Programmer Megan Brown and Senior Designer David Bamber discuss animal behaviours. See below for the major details about their developer post and how you can better manage your zoo.
From left to right: Programmer Megan Brown and Senior Designer David Bamber Habitats and Socializing
There needs to be the correct types of terrain and environments for the animals. There also needs to be somewhere where they can take shelter if they dislike being out in certain weather conditions. Meaning, weather can impact your zoo and your animals’ welfare. For example, rain and snow will make a habitat colder which may have a positive or negative consequence on your animals. Timber Wolves especially would love a snow drift or two.
Of course we all know that keeping your animals happy is a very important part of being a good zookeeper. The animals require a habitat well suited to their needs and desires as well as ongoing care and attention. Habitats need to be spacious enough for the number of animals they contain. That might be a few, depending on the species, because some animals need to socialize more than others. Plain Zebras for that matter will get unhappy very quickly if it finds itself alone.
Shelters and Privacy
Shelters are vital because the animals need a space where they can hide when they are stressed. They can become stressed due to weather conditions or if too many guests are peering in at them. Animals need some peace and some privacy too! Some animals are shy so avoid making a path all around the enclosure. The developers suggest to put windows in the walls at strategic points or a one-way glass instead. Keep an eye on your animals’ behaviour when it seems that they are always hiding. Another example of behaviour is when they lie down in a manner that shows that they are sick.
Food Quality and Other Necessities
You’ll also need to take care of food, water, enrichment items, and the habitat cleanliness. Therefore, you’ll need to make sure you have plenty of zookeepers. Something you may find new is what the developers had to say about food: Food quality is another thing you’ll want to take into account, as it improves the nutritional welfare of your animals. You can research better quality foods for each species, but this will carry an increased cost, so it’s up to you to decide if it’s worth it. Higher welfare animals have the potential to live longer, raise young more successfully, and be more appealing to guests.
Speaking of cleanliness, we felt the need to share the following quote from David, the Senior Designer: I don’t think we can talk about animal behaviour without talking about dung… it’s always a fun aspect to work on (my YouTube recommendations list is now very specific)! We’ve tried to pay special attention to the size, shape, number of ‘boli’ in a pile, and frequency compared to eating rates. We wanted to make sure this vital aspect of zookeeper work is properly represented, and some animals will need extra keepers simply to keep up with the volume of dung (I’m looking at you Elephants!). We know from our conversations with keepers that this less glamourous side of animal care is time consuming, but is absolutely vital to keeping them fit and healthy. By the way, every piece of dung is a physics object that rolls downhill!
Mating System
The mating system compared to Zoo Tycoon will be a little more detailed this time around. Specifically, who will mate with whom. In real life animals have hugely varied mating habits. This ranges from monogamy to polygamy and to seemingly no mating rules at all! This is a more realistic approach to real-life wildlife. To give some examples: with West African Lions, only the Alpha male will be allowed to mate with the females in his pride. Reticulated Giraffes however will mate with any member of the opposite sex.
You can even build habitats for pairs and juveniles, ‘bachelor’ groups of young males, or related family groups. Each species has a range of group sizes and gender mixes it is happy with. Therefore, dig into the Zoopedia to research and plan your populations. The developers go on to say: Maintaining a diverse gene pool is very important, especially if you want your population to remain healthy. Inbreeding between closely related animals will lead to reduced fertility rates and increased chances of catching nasty diseases, so to maintain a healthy group, you will need to make sure mating does not occur between related animals and may need to periodically introduce new individuals to maintain diversity.
Frontier Developments also mention the following: Another example of this is how West African Lions interact with each other as a group. If you put more than one adult male in with an adult female then those animals are going to fight for dominance, and the winner of that fight will become the Alpha of the lions in that habitat. This grants him the sole rights to mating with the females and producing offspring, so if you want specific creatures to breed you’ll need to keep this in mind.
More Annoucments
The developers have been posting different animals that they are confirming will be in the game via Twitter. Each week we get a new reveal along with #ZoopediaFacts about them. The most recent animal is this little cutie-pie below. In one of their Twitch videos, they mention that different species of animals, such as tortoises, will change depending on the island they are on.
Planet Zoo will be appearing at E3’s PC Gaming Show on June 10th, 2019 where they’ll be on stage to reveal the first gameplay trailer for Planet Zoo! We’ll finally get to see how enclosures are constructed and the movements of some animals! Stay tuned with us at myPotatoGames as we learn more about this game!
