It seems like it’s been forever since the days of Zoo Tycoon. Honestly, I can’t remember the last time someone tried to make a game in the same vein, but I suppose that’s all moot now. Planet Zoo is finally here and our inner-zookeepers can finally run wild once again!

For the most part, I’ve never really been interested in simulator-style games. They always just looked like pretend work to me, and the last thing I want to to in a video game is pretend to work a job. Games like Theme Hospital and Zoo Tycoon were a little different though. Theme Hospital was just plain funny, so..yeah, but Zoo Tycoon was something else entirely. I could make the zoo of my dreams and populate with everything from alligators to Tyrannosaurs. It was the kind of game that could get my imagination to run wild as a kid, and now it looks like its spiritual successor is finally here!

Planet Zoo offers three flavors of structured modes: franchise, career, and challenge. The former two seem to task the players with building up the best, most successful chain of zoos the world has ever seen. On the other hand, Challenge mode is all about overcoming specific barriers and/or conditions. Only the best zookeeper can adapt to meet every need after all. The star for most players will likely be sandbox mode, as it’s the one that’ll let them go wild and build the ultimate zoo complete with several different biomes and up to 70 different species. Not all animals play nice together anyway, so sandbox is probably the place to see what will (and won’t) turn into a total disaster. Either way, it sounds pretty fun!

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What do you think of Planet Zoo? Did you play Zoo Tycoon back in the day too?

Lede image is official promotional art