Planet Zoo is a single-player, real-time resource management game that simulates creating, maintaining, and operating an animal zoo park. The zoo has:
- animals, reptiles, and insects that live in small glass-enclosed exhibits and fenced habitats
- facilities for staff and guests such as power, water treatment, vendors, and restrooms
- rides that guests queue up and ride around the park such as monorails and steam trains
- staff to operate and maintain the park including veterinarians, mechanics, vendors, guards, educators, and more
- visiting guests to look at the animals, become educated, eat food, and buy merchandise
- terrain and path design tools to create and modify the park’s layout as it grows
- financial management for tickets, food, drink, and merchandise
- animal management to buy, breed, sell, and release animals into the wild
Learn about Planet Zoo
I am not providing a complete description of the game, but just enough to describe my simulation interests and simulation rig in other articles.
Learn more about Planet Zoo at:
Planet Zoo on my SimRig
I am playing Planet Zoo on my simulator rig (SimRig). The bottom three screens are the game using NVIDIA 3-monitor Surround mode. The top three screens are separate monitors on another computer. On the top monitors, I watch video tutorials or take screenshots of the game monitors. The screenshots are really handy! I can copy some game screen information as a reference while I keep playing on the bottom screens.
I don’t use the steering wheel, but it is not in the way to use the keyboard much. I don’t use the dual joysticks either because the game does not have any construction machinery in it, like “Construction Simulator” game.
A simulation of balance
The game or simulation is all about BALANCE: guest happiness, animal welfare, financial profits and costs, habitat foliage and temperatures, and much more.
As more animals are born and die, the park can become unbalanced requiring changes in staff duties and habitat design. While running in real-time (about one day per 5 seconds at normal simulation speed), the player must keep an eye on many heat maps, notifications, staff workload, and guest happiness. As things change, the player modifies a number of resources to keep the park operating efficiently.
Many different play modes
What I like about Planet Zoo is the different play modes that let me decide what kind of experience I want to have for a particular session or several days. I tend to set some goals and objectives and then play a game.
| Objective | Game Mode |
|---|---|
| Learn all the tools and how to do things | Career tutorials and Sandbox |
| Follow a storyline and career in zoo management | Career |
| Short-term thrill: Think fast, go fast, build fast, adjust fast | Timed scenarios |
| Tailored Challenges (I create with my Zoos) | Challenge |
| Play with others by trading animals online | Franchise |
In this game, I could go further and have an objective to “role-play” the owner of a zoo park and simply focus on breeding very specific animals to be released into the wild. That might not require many guests and visitors nor exhibits and vendors. Except… the zoo park will need to maintain some steady income to pay for some staff, feed, and infrastructure. This sort of becomes a game within a game.
A robust user interface
The game’s user interface (UI) shows the player a number of graphs, maps, menus, reports, and inventories of items, objects, animals, materials, shops, and more. These inventories and reports can be selected, filtered, and sorted to quickly help the player make decisions and change things in the park.
Zoopedia with lots of information
The game is not all just about mechanics and button clicks to get the biggest or most efficient zoo park.
There’s a detailed animal encyclopedia (called Zoopedia) that is needed to learn about each animal, reptile, or insect to effectively balance its needs to live in the park.
In fact, Zoopedia’s information appears to be accurate for real-world animals, thus making this simulation more realistic and in fact a learning experience! How’s that for a “game”?
For example, the aardvark … the “antbear” or “anteater”. Zoopedia explains its reproduction abilities and traits in description and in tabular information. The description is interesting and can be compared to information in other sources like Wikipedia: Aardvark or Britannica: aardvark. The tabular information can help you make balanced decisions for maintaining the habitat and caring for the animals.
Learning opportunities and real jobs
My point is that this game helps you learn things about the animals and how zoos are designed, maintained, and managed. I don’t know if real-life zoo schools use Planet Zoo as a learning aid, but that would be interesting to check out sometime! There are some zoo schools and programs along with online courses. Click on the icons and images to go to their sites.
Zoo, Aquarium, and Animal Shelter Management
Bachelor of Science degree in Zoo Science
Interested in getting a job at a zoo? Many zoos have job listings online. Oh, and the U.S. Government (military included) has jobs for animal caretakers and health technicians. Check them out and start your real-life career!
You can also learn a lot and be entertained by watching guests’ videos on YouTube.
Real-life Zoo information
In Planet Zoo, there are several staff members. They include the following. Associated with each position, there are real-life examples of those positions. Have fun researching! What kind of job do you want?
| Staff | Examples of Real-life Information |
|---|---|
| Vet | Job Description, Diseases, Reproduction, Jobs, Become a Zoo Vet, Zoo Vet Society, Recent News search |
| Keeper | Job Description, Equipment, Association |
| Educator | Job Description, Job Description, Equipment, Association |
| Mechanic | Job Description, ATM Repair, Vending Machine Repair, Solar Panel Repair |
| Security Guard | Job Description, Equipment, Virtual Security Guard |
| Caretaker | Job Description, Job Description, Job Description, Association |
| Vendor | Job Description, Vendor Tips, Become Vendor, Merchandise Vendor, Association |
More information:
- Association of Zoos and Aquariums
- San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance: Science
- Wikipedia: List of zoos by country
Become Inspired!
Attention-to-detail and problem-solving are used and developed.
Planet Zoo can inspire you to work on your problem-solving skills while seeing results quickly or trending over time. Where there is a problem in your zoo park, you can solve it by removing animals, training more staff, adding and moving facilities, or many other things. If that does not work, you can re-examine the problem, or new problems you just created, and try again.
Real-world interest in zoos, animals, medicine, and management is stimulated.
While playing Planet Zoo, you learn about the animals, reptiles, insects, plants, trees, and diseases. I may become inspired to learn more in real life, visit zoos and see them in an entirely different light, or want to get a job at a zoo. A game can be more than a game and ultimately it can educate and inspire.
Leave a Reply