Are you ready for an ice-cold adventure in a wintery wonderland? Perhaps you're willing to face a red-hot challenge, in a setting that will prove the most difficult yet... Are you ready to answer Bernie Goodwin's call?
After an incredible year with our Planet Zoo community, we are thrilled to reveal the Planet Zoo: Arctic Pack, coming alongside free Update 1.1.0 on 17 December 2019!
With two new Scenarios, there will be exciting things for you to overcome as a zoo manager. You'll need to brave harsh landscapes: the mountainous Norway set in the Tundra biome, and the arid Mexico, based in the Desert biome. These two zoos come with their own stories and challenges, which you'll need to deal with to ensure animal welfare and park success.
This Pack also features four brand new Arctic animals: the Polar Bear, Reindeer, Arctic Wolf, and Dall Sheep – all four species come with new challenges and specific needs, so be sure to check the Zoopedia for tips on how to keep them happy and healthy.
Cover your park in a blanket of snow, design an ice sculpture, or build your very own Scandinavian village – there are over 200 new building, scenery, and foliage pieces to choose from and get creative with!
The Arctic Pack will be available to purchase on Steam and Frontier Store for £7.99 ($9.99, €9.99). Please note that you'll need to have the Planet Zoo base game in order to download and play this extra content. Update 1.1.0 will be free for all players.
Thanks to our wonderful community for all of your support since our launch! Keep your eyes on our forums and social channels for all the news and announcements about Planet Zoo, and make sure to tune into our livestreams!
Planet Zoo - Update 1.1.0 coming 17 December
Hayo Zookeepers!
It's the most wonderful time of the year, and it's only fitting that we celebrate with our Planet Zoo community! We're pleased to announce that free Update 1.1 is coming to Planet Zoo on 17 December 2019!
Thanks to your feedback, this free update includes a variety of different features; here's a small overview, to show you why they've been implemented and how they may affect your gameplay!
Slow Animal Aging We've received some feedback regarding the in-game time in Planet Zoo. We'd like to thank you all for giving us your perspective on what speed you'd like to see the animals age, as it has helped us create a solution that we believe everyone will enjoy! Slow Animal Aging is a setting that can be found in the Gameplay section of the Options menu, and you can use it to alter the rate at which your animals age: up to five times slower than normal. This will not only affect aging, but also how quickly the animals mature, how long they gestate for, the amount of time between mating attempts, and how long it takes for their star rating to increase. However, we'd like to highlight that animals will still display all of their other behaviours at the same rate as they do now; this will not be affected by the age setting. Using Slow Animal Aging will slow down the rate things are happening in your zoo, giving you fewer animal births and deaths to deal with. This setting will be available in all modes: Career, Sandbox, Franchise and Challenge. Upon using the slider, the aging of your animals will become disconnected from the in-game years that pass. This is deliberate, not a bug.
Immediate Family on Animal Information Panels We are introducing immediate animal family information, which you can see by selecting an animal and viewing their social tab, included in their information panel. Through this, you will be able to learn of an animal's parentage, siblings and direct descendants. This should help prevent inbreeding in zoos and keep your animals healthy!
Animal Pack Behaviour We have introduced pack structures specific to canines - this applies to Timber Wolves and African Wild Dogs. Alphas are stable within a pack structure, and members won't normally fight unless they are overcrowded. All juveniles will be added to the pack structures. All pack members will be listed in the animal UI.
New Heat Maps We've also created more Heat Maps, which should help you in all aspects of managing your zoo! These Heat Maps involve crime, staff happiness, animal breeding, habitat cleanliness and updates to negative impacts, such as litter and thrown food. These will all be available to you in the Heat Map tab (H), and can help you keep your zoo as prestige as possible.
Improved Social Behaviours The team have added new social interactions for the Ring-Tailed Lemur and Red Ruffed Lemur, meaning you'll see the Lemurs interact with each other, both adult to adult and adult to juvenile. Make sure your animals have enough space to display their behaviour theatres and are happy in all aspects, and they will be able to perform their social interactions!
News Feed We are introducing a News Feed to the Planet Zoo home page, which will update you on any announcements you should be aware of! These will include maintenance information and news updates.
Management Updates We've added new alerts to the game, which will help point out any issues with the setup of your zoo - something we hope will help you better identify what's happening with your parks. A new High Alert will notify players when something that will have a tremendously negative effect on your zoo is happening, such as if an animal escapes or if all Keeper Huts are closed. This High Alert will pop up in the centre of your screen, but can be switched off in the options.
All Alerts can now be switched off on a per category basis; they've been grouped in the options menu.
A new crime management page has been added to the Zoo Overview management screen - this tab will display and locate vandalised items in your zoo.
Refunds have now been modified, and now have a breakdown of costs in the Zoo finance screen. If a guest has spent less than half of their allotted time in the zoo before going home due to low happiness, they will receive a refund. If an animal escapes and the guest flees, they will receive a refund that's proportional to the time they've spent in the zoo. Innocent guests ejected from the park will receive a full refund. Additionally, unhappy guests will not donate as much money to your zoo.
Aurora Borealis Our team have created a beautiful in-game Aurora Borealis, also known as the Northern Lights, which you can see while in the Tundra biome! Keep your eye on the night sky to see them, as they are truly a sight to behold! We're looking forward to seeing your gorgeous screenshots of this natural phenomenon! However, it is important for us to highlight that this feature will only be available in High-Ultra Graphic settings.
Ice Cream Costume An Ice Cream Costume is available to all players to dress up their avatars!
More Creativity! Of course, for all the master builders among us, we're adding a complete ice & snow rock set, enrichment items like a snow ball and a Christmas present, new winter foliage, and ice pathing.
These features will arrive alongside a huge number of gameplay tweaks and bug fixes, which the team have been working hard on in the past few weeks - the full Update Notes will be posted on 17 December when the update goes live. There might be another surprise in store for you as well, so do keep an eye out for any exciting announcements soon.
Planet Zoo - Update 1.0.4
Hello Zookeepers!
Update 1.0.4 is now available and will address some of the issues you raised in your feedback following Update 1.0.3.
Update Notes:
Revert increased refund costs
Fixed sorting issue in the animal management list
Thank you for all your feedback so far. As always, if you encounter any issues please be sure to let our developers know on our Issue Tracker so they can investigate as soon as possible.
Planet Zoo - Update 1.0.3
Hello Zookeepers!
Update 1.0.3 is now available for Planet Zoo and contains over 400 fixes and updates! We've condensed all those fixes down into this bitesize bundle of information to make things easier for you! You'll find a number of fixes for crashes, water treatment balancing, and a load of new options for Sandbox Mode so you can focus more on your animals' happiness!
Here are the Update Notes:
Planet Zoo - 1.0.3 Update Notes
This update contains over 400 fixes and updates.
Stability
Further crash and stability fixes.
Fixed crash on frontend.
Sandbox
Added a series of new options to customise your play -
Power usage
Water treatment
Fence degradation
Predation/fear
Death by old age
Staff happiness degradation
Staff energy degradation
Animal welfare needs
Maximise guest happiness
Freeze guest needs
Guest limit setting now added to sandbox and challenge mode too.
Unlocked assets in scenarios when they are loaded in sandbox and challenge mode.
Fixed issue with assets grouped with guest entrances not being able to be deleted.
Facilities
Balanced water treatment facilities. They should now clean dirty water more effectively.
Inspector
Fixed bug with the inspector incorrectly reporting dehydrated and starving animals.
Animals
Fixed animals being able to be dehydrated whilst swimming.
Fixed bug when cancelling an animal move from the vet surgery which could cause the animal to become stuck.
Fixed bug whereby small animals navigating over scenery could end up inside it.
Fixed issue where animals could become stuck in vet surgery when player cancels moving them whilst they are receiving treatment.
Balanced exhibit animal defecation rates.
Various animation fixes and polish.
Fixed issue when entering and exiting Ansel whilst in orbit camera the camera could relocate to a distant point.
Feeders
Suspended high grazer occupancy increased from 1 to 4 animals.
Staff
Fixed bug with small barrel feeder which could cause the keeper to flip upside down when refilling it.
Added staff thought for staff that can't reach their workzone.
Fixed further staff animation issues.
Fix for vendor becoming stuck when undoing deletion of a shop.
Guests
Fixed protesters and some guests in queues not fleeing escaped animals.
Fixed bug causing guests to sometimes pop in to the air whilst walking.
Scenarios
Updated the layout of scenario 4, adding staff buildings, staff and path layout, and lowered objective requirements.
Updated workzones in scenario 5 and reduced gold objective requirements.
Further balancing of scenario 7.
UI
Fixed further instance that could cause pressing 'X' to stop toggling between rotate and movement modes.
Added notifications for keepers in workzones which don't contain exhibits or habitats.
Fixed 'Release to wild' option being available on animal info panel for animals that have been bought for cash.
Fixed bug causing the time/weather UI close 'X' button to become unresponsive.
Fixed issue where 'Navigable Area' would not update on an animal's info panel whilst it was climbing.
Fixed bug where typing in the loan repayment amount was being reset to the lowest repayments.
Reduced amount of notifications for exhibit animals mating.
Added option to hide blueprints in browser categories.
Updated 'sort' setting in various UI to be retained when switching between tabs.
Fixed bug when selecting certain areas of the globe in the frontend could cause the globe to flip upside-down.
Fixed missing 'Call Mechanic' button on transport station info panel.
Fixed bug with 'Send to Storage' button sometimes being inactive in animal info panel.
Fixed misreporting of food costs on habitat info panel.
Franchise Mode
Added fanfare for community challenge rewards.
Editing
Improved performance when moving train via multiselect button.
Bins and donation boxes should now be easier to place on undulating terrain.
Avatars
Fixed missing torso when using avatar costumes on slim female avatars.
Audio Various bug fixes and polish, including -
Added new ambient music tracks.
Tweaked the “eeuw” reaction behaviour to pooping.
Added a sub mix for headphones / stereo.
More crowd variations and individual reactions.
UI mix pass and additional audio.
Fixed an issue with ambient speakers self-obstructing and muffling the sound.
More variations to animal sounds
Localisation
Various localisation fixes.
Thank you for your continued support and for sharing all your amazing screenshots and animal habitats!
Planet Zoo - Update 1.0.2.2
Hello Zookeepers,
Thank you for your continued feedback and reports since the launch of Planet Zoo. We have a new update available today which will address the issue some of you highlighted where transferring a hungry animal could result in a much larger food cost than usual.
General Fix
When moving hungry animals they will be automatically fed. The calculation for how much the food was costing was incorrect and would cause larger animals’ food costs to be significantly higher than they should.
Please be sure to continue sharing any feedback you have on our forums here or any bugs/issues you encounter on our Issue Tracker. We're now working on Update 1.0.3 which will address a larger amount of bugs and issues; we'll keep you posted!🦁
Planet Zoo - Update 1.0.2.1
Hayo zookeepers!
Thanks for your feedback and making us aware of your feelings regarding the change to the rocks counting towards terrain requirements.
We completely agreed with your feedback as it, unintentionally, affected a lot of previous work; so we want to let you know it has been reverted back to what how it worked previously.
That is: rocks will no longer impact the terrain requirement for your animals. You are once again free to use however many rocks you would like!
This revert has not impacted Update 1.0.2.
Thank you for all of your support. You all rock! 💚:D
Planet Zoo - Update 1.0.2
Hayo zookeepers!
Thank you for all of your wonderfully useful feedback regarding Planet Zoo so far! Thanks to all the reports our community have made, we've been able to implement a wide variety of fixes. We hope that Update 1.0.2 improves your Planet Zoo experience, but please continue to talk to us on the forums and file reports in the Issue Tracker if you feel you're experiencing an issue that has not been addressed.
Here's the Update Notes:
Animals
Fixed a number of cases where animals might ignore food placed in their habitat.
Fix for animal shake behaviour which could lead to them temporarily getting stuck.
Fixed issue where going from water to climbing frames could get animals stuck in a loop.
Fix for boxed animals reporting that they are escaped incorrectly.
Fix for animals walking on water when using climbing frames in water.
Fix for animals jumping incorrectly, which could lead to them becoming stuck on shelter roofs.
Animals group together more often to encourage herding.
Improvements to animals boxing unexpectedly.
Increased population and sex limits of Timber Wolf and African Wild Dog allowing for larger, relatively peaceful packs that still Alpha fight infrequently.
Fix for some animals being pushed through the floor when being tranquilised.
Fixed discrepancy in how exhibit animal welfare was being reported.
Staff
Fix for Staff getting stuck when navigating.
Fix for Vet getting stuck when Vet and Caretaker were both sent to do the same job.
Fix for Mechanics navigating to vandalised objects they shouldn't be able to reach.
Fix for Mechanic sliding whilst repairing objects.
Vendors will now leave newly placed shops if they are unpowered.
Guests
Fix for guests getting stuck when navigating.
Guest thoughts about ticket prices should now update more quickly.
Reduced loss of guest happiness from bad education sources.
Fix for guest thoughts reporting animal visibility incorrectly; guests will report good views!
Sandbox Mode
Added option to limit guest numbers; you can find this setting under Settings - Game - Current Save Settings (as a tick box).
Stability
Multiple crash and stability fixes.
Franchise Mode
Better notifications for failed connections.
Fix for guest avatars showing no name.
Seriously injured animals can't now be traded.
Locked the entrance gates so they can't accidentally be deleted.
Fixed issue with friend list sometimes populating incorrectly.
Added an icon to the Animal Exchange which will mark animals with albinism/leucism.
Optimisations on server load.
Career Mode
Stars should now show correctly on Career Mode saves.
Fixed an issue causing the 'raise barrier height' objective in Scenario 1 to not complete when multi-selecting barriers.
Added hint for Scenario 3 to locate workshop objective.
Fixed Scenario 3 objective logic to include Giant Pandas that have already been sent to Quarantine.
Stopped Scenario 3 Giant Pandas being able to be released to the wild.
Changed Scenario 5 bronze education objective to use star rating.
Updated time of day in scenario 8.
Fixed issue with tutorial hint tips disappearing.
Building and Editing
Fixed case where pressing X would stop toggling between rotate and movement in advanced movement mode.
Fix for placement options not showing for duplicated objects
Enable setting flexicolour for multiple items in group edit mode.
Copy and pasting education objects now retains the assigned education topic.
Fixed issue where deleting and undoing deletion of facilities and power sources could cause the facilities to be incorrectly unpowered.
UI
The Trade Centre should now report animals' correct 'source' information.
Fixed some errors in the Zoopedia regarding age of maturity.
Y axis on finance graph now reports figures above £100,000 correctly.
Fix for sorting exhibit animals by species.
Fixed issue when saving a blueprint with quotation marks in the name would cause them not to show up in game.
Added bar to transport ride UI to show wear and tear.
Fixed unresponsive UI elements when clicking off Zoopedia.
When locating an animal in the animal management menu it will now open the animal's information panel.
Animal information panel enrichment bar now shows correct value.
Switched the position of Staff thoughts and Staff needs in their info panel.
Notifications for Staff not being able to find Staff Centre or Keeper Huts are now red and pop out.
Fix for animal information panel not updating to dead animal information panel.
Added alerts for inaccessible Power and Water Treatment Facilities.
Fixed discrepancy in loan repayments being reported incorrectly.
Barriers
Animals can now escape via climbable chain link fences.
Fix for animals pouncing through walls.
Feeders
Increased the capacity of the Forage Pool Enrichment Feeder to help with feeding issues.
Scenery & Foliage
We solved the case of the mysterious missing D alphabet letter!
Adjusted which branches can be climbed on the large pines.
Achievements
The 'Welcome to Planet Zoo' achievement should now unlock correctly for people who played the Beta.
Audio
Fix for audio occasionally briefly cutting out.
Localisation
Various localisation bug fixes.
We are now working on Sandbox Mode additions, and have more fixes in progress for issues which you’ve raised which we hope to release in the next Planet Zoo update. Thank you again for all of your kind support!
Planet Zoo - Update 1.0.1
Hello Zookeepers!
It's been two days since Planet Zoo's launch and your initial reaction has been phenomenal! We've been loving all of the creations, screenshots and animal details you have shared! We're so grateful for the feedback and reports you have been sending in and the team has been working hard to resolve as many issues as possible.
We've now rolled out our first update for Planet Zoo, designed to fix some of the most immediate issues which have been raised. Please don't worry if an issue you have reported isn't listed; we are still hard at work on your reports and feedback and will have more updates coming soon! Please take a look below for the full update notes:
Stability Added several crash and stability fixes, including -
Crash when deleting pick up based enrichment item while an animal is using it;
Crash when moving staff buildings;
Crash when moving animals to quarantine;
Crash when selecting the Inspector notification;
Crash when signing up to newsletter;
Crash when deleting shops;
Crash when moving exhibits;
Crash when animals are released to wild;
Crash when using 'locate' button from objectives;
Crash when switching between fullscreen and borderless.
Scenarios
Fixed some objectives in Scenario 3 of Career Mode auto-completing.
Franchise Mode & Main Menu
The newsletter sign-up is now hidden during the welcome screen. This will prevent any issues from signing up before creating your avatar.
Fixed issue with profanity filter not allowing players to create franchise zoos. We have also improved messaging regarding this issue.
Staff
Fixed issue with multiple mechanics not repairing vandalised objects efficiently.
Animals
Various improvements have been made to climbing (Sorry flying bears!)
UI
Zoo tax is now shown on the Zoo Overview menu to give you greater information on your finances.
Guests
Fix for guest avatar heads disappearing.
Rendering
Fix rendering issues caused by ultra wide displays.
General
We are aware of an issue where the wrong image is displayed for the Community Challenge (it should be the tigers!). If this is the case, please restart your Steam client as it's a caching issue; do let us know if the issue persists!
As mentioned, this is only the first of our post-launch updates for Planet Zoo. We'll be sure to keep you informed regarding the next ones! Thank you again for your continued support and feedback!
Planet Zoo is OUT NOW 🦁🦓🦒
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It feels like forever ago, but it's only been seven months since we originally announced Planet Zoo; we'd been working on the game for over two years, and at that point we finally got to share what we had in store for you.
Today, on 5 November 2019, Planet Zoo is live!
Planet Zoo is an absolute passion project for us as a studio; many of us at Frontier have grown up playing similar titles, taking care of our zoos and our animals (or you know, occasionally releasing them to chase out the guests!), so for us to have the chance to bring Planet Zoo to a whole new generation was very special.
Planet Zoo is all about running a successful zoo, in whichever way you prefer to play. In Career Mode, you are joining a cast of original characters on a journey around the world facing different challenges depending on where your zoo is located. We've taken great care to bring you a fun, engaging, and original story filled with adventure and progressively harder objectives. We've also got Franchise Mode, which is aimed at those who are keen to work together and trade animals with a global network of other players, and run multiple zoos. Franchise Mode also contains weekly Community Challenges, which are exciting objectives that run from Tuesdays to Sundays and result in an exciting new outfit for your avatar if successful! If you prefer to keep the challenge to yourself and your own zoo, we've got Challenge Mode for you - here you'll find specific Zoo Challenges on a limited budget. And finally, of course we have Sandbox Mode for all those who want to build and create without any limitations! Let your imagination truly run wild...
Animal welfare is at the heart of Planet Zoo. You are tasked with creating the perfect habitats, monitoring your animal's individual needs, and ensuring you have enough Zookeepers, Veterinarians, and other Staff to take care of all of your zoo's inhabitants. We've created the Zoopedia, an in-game hub which hosts all the information on every animal species in your zoo. You can find their preferred surroundings, foliage and temperature, their conservation status, and even which other species they could co-exist with!
A successful zoo is not just about happy and healthy animals - you also want to take care of your guests so that they give your zoo a high rating! Place Shops and other guest facilities to make sure they have spaces to eat and rest, have enough benches and bins, and hide away your Staff facility buildings from sight. Guests will want to see the animals too, so find the balance between a good view and an animal's privacy - and don't forget to place Education signs so guests can learn about the animals, as well as Donation Boxes which contribute to your cash flow and animal conservation!
And if you're simply into building the most amazing structures and habitats, we've got the Steam Workshop all set up for you. There's lots of building and scenery pieces for you to use, so anything from custom entrances to climbing structures can be shared with the entire community. We've even made it possible to add terrain to Habitat blueprints, so you can create the perfect habitat and upload it straight to the Workshop. We cannot wait to see what you're going to create!
Of course there's so much more to Planet Zoo, and we're really excited you can now finally play the full game and explore everything yourself. We will be here every step of the way with weekly livestreams, Community Challenges, developer interviews, and more! We'd like to encourage you to keep using the official forums and social channels for your feedback - we're reading everything. Let us know what you discover, which animals steal your heart (they will!), and share your creations with us.
Thank you so much for your ongoing support, your passion and enthusiasm about the game, and all of your helpful feedback and comments. Now go and create the zoo of your dreams!
❤️ The Planet Zoo team.
Planet Zoo - Launch Update Notes
Planet Zoo - Launch Update Notes
There have been many updates and bug fixes to Planet Zoo since our Beta; here are some of the more noteworthy things we'd like to call out before you jump into the game!
General
When launching the game after clicking PLAY in Steam, you may encounter a delay where you see a white screen prior to the game appearing.
If you have an existing Scenario 1 save from the Beta, please delete your save for the best play experience.
Blueprints from the Beta should be available on the Steam Workshop. Some asset pivot points may have changed, which means your blueprint might require moving and resaving.
Please create an avatar before signing up to the newsletter.
Animals
Further balancing to breeding rates.
Average animal longevity has been raised.
Improvements to animal boxing and unboxing.
Further social interaction animations added.
Big cats now have retractable claws (except for the Cheetah, as they are not supposed to have retractable claws).
Staff
Keepers will work out how much food they need to prepare for a habitat based on how many animals are in the habitat. They will then prioritise filling enrichment feeders before standard feeders. This can mean that if all of the prepared food is placed in enrichment feeders, the standard feeders won't be filled!
There have been many improvements to keeper feeding behaviour. Keepers can become tired and won't perform their duties if they are not rested, so make sure you let them have some time off at a Staff Centre now and again.
Mechanics should now fix broken facilities more reliably.
Franchise Mode & Frontend
The Animal Exchange can now be filtered.
Improved notifications when players are unable to purchase animals from the Animal Market.
Research
Vets now stop researching once they reach advanced research and must be manually re-assigned.
Mechanics will now perform continuous research until they complete the category they are assigned to.
Help, UI & Notifications
Planet Zoo has extensive help files; these are a great way to learn how to run your zoo smoothly.
Additional notifications including animal pregnancy/birth.
