

I increased the size of each wall individually, but the game actually wanted me to use a tool to raise them all at once, which was not explained and caused 20 minutes of frustration. One less drastic but still frustrating example of unclear tutorial design came in the first level, where I was tasked with raising the perimeter walls of my enclosure to 3.9 meters.
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In particular, an early mission that asks players to create their own profitable zoo from scratch feels like it’s throwing people in at the deep end, floundering without enough hands-on practice to reliably know how to achieve that goal. But there were a few times where the career mode spiked in difficulty, expecting me to apply theoretical knowledge to complex tasks without warning. The scenarios clearly explain individual actions - like building perimeter walls for enclosures, changing types of biomes, and ensuring park staff can access the animals - at a pace that isn’t overwhelming.


This mode took me around 15 hours to complete, and for the most part, it did a pretty good job of explaining how to play the game. In career mode, Planet Zoo takes players through a set of story-based scenarios, complete with voice-acted characters feeding you tutorial instructions and backstory to get you comfortable with your work at several zoos around the world. The emotional stakes are much higher when the comfort and lives of animals are introduced, versus only having to worry about the lives of other people. It’s one thing if your theme park fails it’s quite another when your business goes under while all of your exotic animals are suffering. While the core of the game will be familiar to those versed in other management sims, the sheer detail and realism of the animals under your care adds an unexpected level of additional stress not felt in similar titles. Doing so while making sure that the necessary standard of care doesn’t slip is a large part of the challenge. Players are responsible for building and maintaining a functioning zoo, and ensuring not only that its animals are well looked after, but also that the business turns a profit. Planet Zoo, the newest game from Planet Coaster and Jurassic World Evolution maker Frontier Developments, is a building and management sim in the vein of older titles like Zoo Tycoon. I want my animals to be healthy and happy, probably more than I want the same things for my visitors I was thankful that someone was now out there holding me accountable, pointing out how I was hurting these creatures, and making me feel bad enough about my actions that I’d make sure to pay better attention to my habitats going forward. The relief came from the fact that I had known, for some time, that there was an issue somewhere, some flaw in the system had been making the crocodiles ill I just hadn’t been able to find it. And I was already in a financially precarious situation with my zoo, which is where the panic came from. I was worried that the harm would be irreversible, both to the animals I was here to protect and to the reputation of my zoo. This wasn’t just a success meter falling in the game, but a set of animals I had enclosed, put under my own care, and then neglected to care for properly in the public eye. I hadn’t installed a water filter, and my freshwater crocodiles were suffering because of the incorrect water properties of their enclosure. The first time protesters showed up at my zoo, I felt a mixture of panic, guilt, and relief.
