Zoo Tycoon was a gentle sim which spawned a number of expansion packs and then a much improved sequel. In this review we take a look at the series overall and highlight the improvements made in Zoo Tycoon 2. These games are educational, fun and suitable for the whole family.
The Zoo Tycoon series is a lot of fun and it offers simple business simulation gameplay with an educational twist. The original Zoo Tycoon was released in 2001 developed by Blue Fang Games and published by Microsoft Game Studios. It wasn’t a big hit with critics but male and female gamers of all ages loved it. Two expansion packs followed the next year, Zoo Tycoon: Dinosaur Digs and Zoo Tycoon: Marine Mania and they offered lots of new animals for Zoo Tycoon. Then in 2004 Blue Fang improved on the original with the streamlined sequel Zoo Tycoon 2. Several expansion packs followed and eventually in 2008 they released the Ultimate Collection which bundled them all together.
The basic gameplay is the same throughout the series. Your mission is to build a thriving zoo which attracts loads of visitors and makes big profits. In order to do that you will need to have plenty of animals. You also need to keep them happy and healthy so the visitors enjoy seeing them. In addition to the animals and their enclosures you have to hire staff to keep the zoo running and build amenities for the visitors. Finally you need to beautify the park to maximise people’s enjoyment.
This is all typical stuff you’ll find in any of the top tycoon games and the gameplay suffers from the same problems. The big difference with the Zoo Tycoon series is the focus on animals and their welfare. Each animal has a fact file which provides textual information on their preferences. You can build enclosures from segments of fence but you must choose the correct type for each individual animal to ensure they don’t escape. You also have to try to create something of a suitable size which is always a challenge because you have limited funds. The next step is to ensure the terrain within each enclosure suits the animal, by adding something they like you’ll get a happy face icon and something they don’t like gets an unhappy face icon. In the original game this was a tedious exercise as you added individual patches of sand or grassland, rocks or trees trying to find the perfect balance to keep your animal happy. In Zoo Tycoon 2 they fixed this and allowed you to add suitable biome terrain which automatically applied the correct mixture of terrain types.
Keeping your animals happy will result in them frolicking and maybe even breeding and both are good for your zoo. Apart from getting the terrain right you’ll need to keep them well fed, keep their enclosure relatively free of poo and give them some toys to play with and a shelter they like. The AI staff in the game, like with most tycoon games, can be infuriating. In some enclosures cleaning up the poo seems to be a full time job for your zookeepers.