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That’s the hook for me here, the interplay between designing a great exhibit for guests and a great habitat for the animals. Or in Planet Zoo, for people who want to lay out an ambitious grizzly bear pen complete with a mountain, a faux-cave, and a waterfall. It’s for people who want to place every trash can and every tree and every rock, who want to spend hours beautifying a reptile house or maybe just a toilet. Planet Zoo, like Planet Coaster before, is an incredible construction kit. Still, I’m having a great time sidestepping the issue by building a massive zoo with everything in it. The current implementation is bizarre, and undercuts what should be one of Planet Zoo’s best ideas.

That sort of Haussmann-like renovation is par for the course in builders, but Franchise Mode seems designed precisely to avoid such situations. Laying out a gondola was proving needlessly difficult and I was having a hard time keeping my staff’s assigned work areas organized. After spending 12 to 15 hours on my first, I realized I’d backed myself into a corner in terms of some late-game options. Of course, that also means you’re going to screw up the first time. It’s manageable though, with most of the nonfunctional items hidden until after you’ve laid down a foundation and done some research.

Starting a new zoo is still intimidating, presented with acres upon acres of empty land to fill. You can research new themes to decorate your zoo, new staff facilities to accommodate your growing employee pool, new barriers to better protect your guests from your animals (and vice versa), and so on. You start with a limited construction kit and limited funds, then gradually expand both your zoo and your options. Positioned between Career and Creative, Franchise Mode is a slightly structured sandbox. Twice-or three times now, if you count the beta.

You could play with a restricted toolbox in someone else’s zoo…or you could just go make your own.Īnd make your own, I did. The prefab zoos Frontier includes for each mission are inspiring, sure, but unlocking all 14 will take a lot of patience. I did dabble in the Career early on, but quickly tired of going through the motions of what felt like an extended tutorial. It’s a lot of hours, most of them spent in Franchise Mode.