I LOVE the idea of trading of animals for a healthy genetic pool. That being said, that is genetics, and they’ve made no mention of animals getting sick, dying, or even a genetics sub-section of the game. I hope it’s all there including lots of variations within each animal that’s carried genetically… cause that would be AWESOME.
From what I can recall, they have confirmed that animals have different genetic characteristics that affect aesthetic things like size, color, patterns. They have mentioned in passing that poor environments can make animals sick. Hopefully genetics can affect more substantial things like lifespan, disease, breeding performance, personality, etc. They have hinted theres alot more to reveal in this area.
Ps new gameplay video :
Not sure if there is multiplayer, but if so AntediluvianArk would like to be in all of your stud books.
Boy they could really hit a home-run with this if they embed as many traits as possible in the “animal genetics” making it as deep as possible. Introducing in-bred possibilities would be cool, like a missing limb or alteration to its primary attribute, like the horn or tusk.
That sounds… disturbing. I don’t know that they need to go that far… although I certainly don’t want to take away from your hopes and dreams.
No Island of Dr. Moreau then? LOL
Haha. I still remember Val’s version of that movie.
If the choice is between mutant gene animals and say bland visual animals with no depth, I assure you I will hope for your Dr. Moreau scenario instead.
Knowing Frontier, I expect this will basically be the Jurassic Park system but in a real world context.
I know Jurassic Park was as disappointment but out of the roller-coaster options Planet Coast was a pleasant surprise… so hopefully they learned from the two experiences…
Frontier clarify Franchise Mode and Conservation Credits:
No buying currencies with real $…
I sure hope playing the game isn’t as needlessly complicated as their Franchise Mode looks to be.
Anyone pre-order the Deluxe edition to get into the beta in a couple weeks? I must confess to being tempted.
I did! Really looking forward to it… not sure how much I will play the beta though, probably just a few hours just to get familiar.
I’ve been playing Jurassic World Evolution to take my mind off real life a bit. I’ma stressful mess at the moment so this game fits good right now. The production values on this are simply out of this world. Phenomenally impressive. However, very little actual gameplay which means little depth. Balance is horrendous. Once your colony gets going you explode into a bajillion dollars. I sure hope they learned some lessons from that for Planet Zoo. Zoo could be an amazing game, but if much of the game is re-skinned from Jurassic World Evolution, there won’t be much there except looking at the pretty animals.
But like I said, talk about production values. Wowsa. I’m extremely impressed with Frontier’s art department.
I broke down and pre-ordered the Deluxe edition. Get to play the Beta copy next week! I’m pretty stoked… been waiting years for a new zoo tycoon game.
Can’t believe it but I pre-ordered the deluxe edition of this. Even though Jurassic Evolution was a rather vapid experience that left the strategy side of me wanting, I did enjoy it as it was the right game at the right time. By participating in the paid beta I hope maybe we can influence them to put more effort into the strategy or financial side of their sims. In JWE before I was halfway done with a park I’d have half a billion dollars which totally ruined the entire dollars part of the game design.
The beta comes out tomorrow and runs till early October.
Here are some details on what will be included:
I will be working from home tomorrow and will be sure to give this a spin and post impressions to the thread will unfortunately be unable to play as I will be working really hard all day!
Trying to play the beta. Instant crash when I try to start first mission, and since that’s what we’re supposed to test, looks like I won’t be getting too far.
ObsidianAnt is streaming now.
First impressions from 2 hours of Beta play:
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In terms of free form construction and scope for creativity, this is akin to Planet Coaster and has none of the restrictions that Jurassic Park had (that I can see anyway).
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In terms of gameplay, it’s clear from the start that Planet Zoo is already lightyears ahead of Planet Coaster. The guest/staff management aspects seem about as deep as Coaster, which is to say it is somewhat shallow, yet the game adds animal management as its main focus. So far it seems like trying to maintain/improve animal welfare and get them to breed makes for much more interesting and challenging gameplay than designing coasters and maximising guest fun on them (at least to me).
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The textures on the animals are mostly really great. You can see fur, intricate patterns, and for most of the animals the faces are terrific (notable exceptions include the male Lion). You can also discern differences between each of the animals.
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The models and animation are also great from what I have seen so far.
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It seems like there is a great amount of little subsystems and aspects to the animal simulation (e.g. the game determines which animal is the alpha of an enclosure by size/strength, and if you bring in a larger male they will challenge the existing alpha).
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The franchise mode, which is in the beta in a limited form, is such a great idea. You can create a string of your own branded zoos, trade animals between them or buy from the world market, and so on. It is essentially online-only as you are actually buying animals that other people have put up for sale. The game will have a separate sandbox mode which is offline. In the Beta it seems like they need to iron some bugs with the world market.
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A key aspect to the immersion of this game will be its forms of progression. It should be the case that when you start a zoo franchise you only have access to common and abundant species, with access to rarer species coming only after a gradual increase in reputation. At least in the Beta, this isn’t the case. I opened up a franchise zoo and immediately bought a few Wild Dogs using trivial amounts of $ and some conservation credits.
Here are some screenshots of their habitat I made. Keep in mind I am artistically challenged:
I made this rock shelter from scratch:
The game can be really beautiful:
Initially made the barriers too low:
In summary, if you really enjoy zoo games or wild animals, hop in the water is warm! If not, no harm to wait for reviews on release.
EDIT: I should add that performance has been good so far. The first career mission opens up a fairly sizable zoo with many assets and guests running around, and I was able to run it at 4k rez near max settings with good fps (and occasional momentary slowdowns).