Some games and genres make it easy to create sequels, while others make it difficult. For management sims, the typical buildup of expansions in the years following release can create a developmental minefield of fan expectations. With Planet Zoo 2, at least, there are some major fan requests and wishes to be fulfilled. Namely adding sea creatures and flying creatures to what your zoo can house, but this game will go further in other areas as well.
Arriving seven years after the original, Frontier is able to take a step forward in terms of its underlying game engine, which lends itself to some truly stunning new visuals. This is a new version of Frontier’s Cobra engine, which goes beyond just enabling higher quality assets for foliage, rocks and general terrain, but also brings a new global lighting system, proper ambient occlusion and much more. There’s still a slightly odd juxtaposition between the cartoon human guests and the realistic environments and now the increasingly realistic animals, but it works.
Let’s start with a dive below the water’s surface, whether it’s crocodiles requiring a mixed habitat, capable of moving from land to water and creating physics-based waves, or with the new aquariums with delightful twilight rays projected into the water. These are a million miles away from simply installing water tanks in a building and can be sculpted habitats filled with dozens of different types of sea creatures, with side viewing windows for guests who, perhaps, pass through adjacent cave systems to witness the majesty. The staff, meanwhile, will have to don diving suits with wacky fishbowl-style helmets, going in and out of the aquariums to clean, perform maintenance and all their other tasks.
There are two types of sea creatures, with “hero animals” like turtles and ridiculous-looking sunfish, or with the various schools of smaller fish. The heroic creatures meet all welfare requirements, while the benches are treated as a group and all will have their natural desires for depth, creating a multi-layered viewing experience. There’s dynamic pathing through environments – you can create underwater arches and tunnels for fish to pass through, for example – and the all-new creature animation rig allowed for the very different movements needed for different species to swim.
In this regard, there is a lot of crossbreeding with birds and flying creatures. Once again, Frontier had to deal with a completely different style of movement with jumping and flying, a full 3D course as birds fly between trees, branches and other roosting spots, and the task of capturing the look of our beautiful feathered friends. Another key aspect is the habitat of their aviaries, as the birds would fly away if they could. Aviaries have roofs dynamically generated for you based on the boundary fences and support posts you place, with different angles and heights. The roof is then automatically generated and adjusted on the fly as you make adjustments and changes, whether it’s a trellis (the tension and sag of which you can control), glass, or other materials.
It’s not just the new creature types that have been lavished with love and attention, and Frontier has also shown how they’ve upped their ground game. You can build large wooden climbing structures for the monkeys – the western chimpanzee in this demo – and beyond great fur and more detailed faces, the new animation rig allows for much better behaviors. There are better climbing animations and transitions from walking to climbing, and creatures will discover for themselves if they prefer to jump across a corner of the frame instead of walking all the way. More ambient behaviors mean they may hang or sleep while swinging their limbs on a beam, so this goes beyond just navigation.
Tigers are another great example of the improved fur shaders, and Frontier can now overlay animations onto base movements, so you can read an animal’s behavior – this particular tiger looked generally lethargic and unhappy, needing water because it was thirsty.
Adding a puddle was a single click for a depression in the terrain, and after a small drink the tiger was immediately more active, moving a little faster and happily starting to rub against the landscape and scratch a tree. That’s right, the scratching and similar behaviors of happy animals are no longer limited to the enrichment items you place, and they will also be able to use trees and other appropriate items.
That’s a pretty overall improvement for animals, and it’s improving for humans as well. There’s more detail and activity in all staff areas, so you can see people at work, and open plaza areas are now featured, like in Planet Coaster 2. The Workshop is also now integrated into the Building and Item Browser, so players will be able to build on general, curated player creations, quickly pick them up, and drop them into your own world – ideal for someone who just wants something that looks cool but doesn’t feel like to delve deeper into the tools of creation himself. The possibilities, however, are delightful, a gift shop with multi-angled roofs, full-size windows, doors or not, and many other fine details.
But it’s not just about your zoo, or even your family of zoos. Planet Zoo 2 builds even further on the conservationist message of the first game, showcasing wildlife reserves on the world map, allowing you to invest in and restore these large, open regions and release animals into the wild to live out their lives. These are not structured like zoos, so there are no isolated habitats, it is just an open area with a few observation points for staff, allowing the herds of giraffes and elephants to roam freely.
It’s a delicious meta layer of Planet Zoo 2 that shows Frontier really cares about this angle. It’s all well and good to modify habitats and monitor stats and happiness meters within your zoo, to encourage guests to see and appreciate the breadth of what the natural world has to offer, but zoos are so much more than entertainment, and it’s great to see that showcased in this game.
