All posts tagged in Planet Zoo
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!
- Jul 25, 2019
What we learned from the most recent addition to the developers journal for Planet Zoo.
The same amazing developers that brought us the Tycoon series, Frontier Developments, have been working super hard on their new project, Planet Zoo. In case you missed it, Planet Zoo is a massive simulation game where players will get to create and run their very own zoo. We’ve already touched a bit on this title, with our coverage of how you will manage your animals behavior in Planet Zoo. Now, the developers have gone into a bit more detail with their discussion of the Zookeepers and the Staff Paths.
Staff Paths and Zookeepers in Planet Zoo
Zookeepers in Planet Zoo will function exactly as they do in real life. They will help you maintain your zoo and keep your animals happy. They will feed them, keep them hydrated, and even clean up after they defecate. The game is set so that you not only need to employ the zookeepers, you must also keep them happy. This way they will be more inclined to keep your animals happy. Negative treatment toward your employees will surely impact your business in the same regard.
Much of the games difficulty is experienced through your relationship with your crew. Manage them wisely, lest you face the consequences. The developers have mentioned quite an in-depth interaction system between the players and the employees of the park. The relationships you have with your employees will directly affect the visitors to your zoo. Having proper zones for them to function will be a key aspect in keeping the flow going. Staff paths are the zones that only your employees can traverse, giving them opportunity to avoid congestion of visitors, and meet the needs of animals in the most expedient manner. This will also prevent visitors from accessing zones that will negatively impact their opinion of the park.
For more in-depth information on the topic, you can check out the developers journal at Frontier Developments Forum site.
- Jun 10, 2019
The PC Gaming Show was a press conference at E3 2019 that streamed June 10th, 2019 and was dedicated to PC gaming. The show comprised of 2-hour announcements including world exclusive games and more information on games we already love like Planet Zoo. See below for a list of PC games from the conference that we here at myPotatoGames are most excited about!
- Starmancer: is a space station building and management game. The game offers gameplay with consequences, a living sandbox environment, crafting, and managing the daily lives of colonists. It’s available for Beta access now and will release sometime in 2020. Starmancer is developed by Ominux Games and published by Chucklefish.
- Planet Zoo: Join the Beta this summer with the full release coming November 5th, 2019 (pre-order now for PC only). Below you can watch their new gameplay trailer with more actual gameplay footage coming this Friday!
- Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is an upcoming third-person survival game developed by Panache Digital Games. It now gets a release date of August 27th, 2019 for PC first.
- Terraria Journey’s End: is a massive new update including over 800 new items. The biggest news is the added features of being able to play golf and a harder difficulty mode. These updates will release sometime in 2019 and will be free for those that already own Terraria.
- El Hijo: is a non-violent western stealth game (no gunfights) in which you are a 6-year-old boy on a quest to find your mother. This game, developed by Honig Studios and published by HandyGames, will be coming to PC and consoles but still has no set release date.
As always, stay tuned with us here as we bring you more E3 2019 news with upcoming press conferences by Ubisoft and Square Enix. Will continue to talk about the most wholesome, casual, and cute games you won’t want to miss!
- 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!
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