Animal Magic

Design and manage your own zoo, and care for amazingly realistic animals in Frontier’s next big game, PLANET ZOO.

- Andy Kelly

The next game from Frontier, the creator of Elite Dangerous and Planet Coaster, is a zoo simulator. It makes sense, really. The developer has created zoo management games in the past, and it feels like a natural extension of the Planet series. But Planet Zoo it’s a very different game from Planet Coaster, with a focus on caring for animals, ecology, and preservation over the immediate, gut-churning thrills of a theme park.

“They both have a lot in common,” explains Piers Jackson, Planet Zoo’s game director. “They’re both part of the same Planet franchise, of course, but we have a very different focus here. Planet Coaster has a heavy engineering focus, on rides. But here we have a heavy welfare focus on the animals. That’s really where our simulation is grounded. Creating the most authentic animals we can, getting the player to look after them.”

You have total freedom when it comes to designing your zoo, building habitats, decorating it, and filling it with animals. Like Planet Coaster there’s a vast Lego set of bits-andpieces to slot together, letting you create any zoo you can imagine. Then you can choose which animals to populate it with, and even breed your own. The game also has a strong conservation message, reflecting the real-world importance of giving these creatures happy, fulfilling lives, not just exploiting them for financial gain.

“Animal husbandry is core to any modern zoo, and some of these zoos are doing a fantastic job in that regard,” says Jackson. “We’ve spoken to zoo keepers as part of our research on this project, and they are there for the animals. They’re trying to repopulate the wild wherever they can. That’s something we very much wanted to reflect in Planet Zoo.”