I’m a bit behind as of late on my reviews, well more so than usual. These things happen. It doesn’t help I am fairly inconsistent in playing just one game a go as well. I’m a sucker for simulation games, I’m a big fan of Roller coaster Tycoon, Planet Coaster and the likes. I’m waiting for the day we finally get a remaster of Lemonade Tycoon, to be completely honest I dream of it sometimes. So I was scrolling though the deals online and came across this game.
I was fairly sold on the two trailers for this game and it’s whimsical stylings. It also helps it’s not particularly expensive and came with one of the two DLC contents the Dinosaur Island pack. I have yet to start that content as this game ended up being far meatier then I anticipated. In the best of ways. It’s not as straight forward as building a pen and buying animals. It’s an expansive management sim. You have to build a suitable pen with water, enrichment and decoration for each specific animal. This starts off very limited but with the research centre as the days pass you earn research points to put into getting new shelters, toys etc. This also plays into what stores you can build. From food and drink stalls to gift shops. As well as the decorations for the park itself, varying styles of benches, trees, plants, subway station for easier access to your ever expanding park. It doesn’t stop there either, you need zoo keepers, janitors, mascots, vet’s, staff for all of your stalls, your recycling centre, later game for your farming, so you can become more of a self sufficient zoo. I am definitely missing stuff off here but you get the point. This all increases visitors to your zoo, as well as what they are willing to pay for entry and as they visit your food vendors.
The most unique part of this game, and something I particularly enjoy is the DNA splicing. The game comes with a base amount of 60 or so animals I believe. So you’d imagine there wouldn’t be much to collect, you’d be wrong. Each individual animal comes with 10 variants which have to be unlocked via breeding. A real fucking grind and one of my only gripes for the entire game. Once you unlock 5 out of the 10 genomes you can pick two separate animals to create a completely new creature. So you can end up with a spotty Capybara with the head of duck, or a snake with the head of a Hyena. I think this works out at over 300,000 variations you are able to put in your zoo. Well that’s what it says on the cover of the box anyhow.
The game for my personal preferences looks incredible, having the look of the games from yesteryear. With the super colourful and vibrant 16 bit style, it adds an easier setting for a deceptively in depth game. The animals looks great if not slightly chunky, i’d also argue they are all the same size whether a Hippopotamus or a Rabbit. This isn’t a criticism, rather, just something I noticed. To further your animal collection you have to buy new plots of land, and trade with other zoos across the globe with specific variants, and before you know it you’ve amassed like 400 animals with 30 to unlock still.
Buying plots of land gets expensive fairly quickly, to balance it out you have to really work on unlocking new bus routes. This comes from either the small tasks you are allocated as you go along or from research which gives you bigger coaches. Now visitors are tied into the games morality mechanics. You can either be good or evil. To be good is easy just make sure your animals are well looked after, you don’t buy from the black market or build glue factories, or an abattoir, or even a bacon factory to name a few of the evil buildings you can unlock. The next important thing to do is making your zoo look good. Now mine looks like shit, I won’t lie, this is mainly due to I’m just trying for trophies rather than the more fun sandbox mode I’ll inevitably move onto too. Picking where to spend your research points is somewhat critical here for this. Now you can unlock everything, but there is no clear path, each node unlocks surround ones that are previously hidden. Each node comes with stacking bonuses, and as you can imagine some are more important than others. Animal enrichment items give an over buff for how much happiness they have per item in their enclosures. Buying lampposts allow you stay open for longer, better transport, decorations increase visitors happiness and how much they want to spend. You also get access to atms, richer visitors, how much they rest when they sit on a bench or when using a shelter. This list goes on somewhat. For me this is a step up on the usual park building sims I’ve played and it’s something I’d like to see integrated more in the future.
Now this game isn’t completely perfect but very nearly. I do have some negatives, one I’ve already mentioned the breeding. You get access to nurseries and you pick a pair to breed and they have a chance of producing the necessary offspring you are after. It basically doesn’t happen, you get stuck on 1 or 2 genomes left and they have like 26% success rates, it’s fucking nonsense. Now my big three annoyances, at number 3. The pens entrances get blocked for no good reason and the zoo keepers can’t get in no matter what you do. You can’t just pick them up and plop them in there either, it’s bullshit. You could do that in the first rollercoaster tycoon, it’s a feature I’d like to be added. The only way to fix this is seems to be moving the entire pen and that’s if you’ve got room cause if not they all die from hunger. Now for number 2, low water, with every passing day comes the rising sun and the animals ever increasing thirst. For me this is the Ducks, the Geese, the snakes, the meerkats, it’s ceaseless. Now this ties directly into the biggest pain in my ass. The relentless overpopulation, some animals just don’t fucking stop. I give the bigger pens and more water and everyday they’ve tripled. The game gives you population hut’s as well feeding to auto buy food. Now I must be doing it wrong as from what I can tell. They straight up don’t work. I have to use the conservation hut to release an endless stream rabbits into the world every day. It takes away something when you have to start every day messing around with stocking up food, releasing a hundred animals, all the while the constant breeding fails for the variant you actually want.
I give this game a very high 9 out of 10, Pure Tasty Gaming.
This game comes with great art style and real in-depth sim management that I wasn’t expecting. It’s easy to sink a couple hours in and not achieve much but at the same time achieve a fair amount. A few quality of life improvements wouldn’t go amiss, like calm down the animal fucking, being able to move your staff as you’d please as well as knowing who’s being assigned to which zones for easier control of getting your animals fed,watered and cleaned more efficiently. However, none of this detracts on how fun the game is overall and I’m very much looking forward to going down the evil route in the future.
Released 29th September 2022 on Sony Playstation 5
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