
Overall, the game does a good job of letting you know how well you are doing. Planet Zoo sometimes provided a daunting list of alerts that provide information about vital happenings around the zoo, ranging from animal welfare issues to notifications of high amounts of litter or protestors entering the zoo. Invariably, you start out with the best intentions, but things go a little sideways from there. It is a very daunting task to tie everything together and build a zoo from scratch. How you do this is up to you you can hide things behind walls or other buildings, or you can build the guest walkways above the staff facilities. This means that you have to design the zoo in such a way that is conducive to the habitats and so the guests can easily see the animals - while keeping everything else out of sight. As important as your veterinary clinics and water treatment machinery are to your zoo, guests get a negative impression whenever they can see them. You also must be mindful of how much your guests can see behind the curtain. You can do this by placing displays featuring the animals next to their exhibits and/or speakers, which go a long way toward sating the guests' desire for knowledge. Guests not only have needs, such as being able to eat and use the restroom, but they also want to be educated about the animals. It's dealing with these crowds of people that becomes another important part of maintaining your zoo. Happy animals are rated higher, which draw larger crowds of people to your zoo. This lets you more effectively handle the animal needs, which makes them happier. To find whatever enrichment items work best with the animal, you can simply go the place within the UI to purchase them and filter them based on the animal type. In the case of things, such as enclosure size or terrain types, you can also see the range that they're comfortable with, taking the guesswork out of tweaking the habitat to suit the animal. For example, if you select an animal within a habitat, you can see all its needs and if they are being fulfilled. Thankfully, Planet Zoo does a great job of plainly spelling this out and giving you the tools to address any issues with an animal's welfare. It is a lot to worry about, and that is before you consider other needs, such as social and food enrichment items, population needs, or other aspects that can affect an animal's welfare. You must also worry about the terrain type of the enclosure to make sure it's the right mix of grass, sand, snow and soil to accommodate the animal as well as if they need any natural water formations. The size of the habitat depends on the animal type(s) you want to hold some animals simply need larger space than others. The walls of these enclosures can be wooden walls, one- or two-way glass, or even natural barriers like buildings or cliffs. Ultimately, your park revolves around the animals, which are kept within enclosures that keep them within their own exhibit. At any given moment, you might go from fretting over whether you need more soil or long grass in your panda enclosure to balancing vendor prices of your concessions stands, and these tutorials hold your hand through the basics. There is a lot to understand to start a park of your own, so these first few levels are key to learning the game foundation. Each of the three levels puts you in charge of a fully established park that needs a few tweaks. It's best to start with the Career mode, which starts with three tutorial levels specifically designed to help you understand the basics. With Planet Zoo, Frontier has managed to get even closer to what a good park-building game should be: tons of customization but enough of an on-ramp to understand it before being thrown into the deep end. This recent string started with Planet Coaster, which was a deep yet difficult-to-approach game and continued with the easier and much simpler Jurassic World Evolution. With every "park" game that it develops, Frontier Developments gets closer and closer to the ideal game of the genre.
