Planet Zoo News

Hayo Zookeepers!

Brrrrr......

Are you ready for an ice-cold adventure in a wintery wonderland? Perhaps you're willing to face a red-hot challenge, in a setting that will prove the most difficult yet... Are you ready to answer Bernie Goodwin's call?



After an incredible year with our Planet Zoo community, we are thrilled to reveal the Planet Zoo: Arctic Pack, coming alongside free Update 1.1.0 on 17 December 2019!

With two new Scenarios, there will be exciting things for you to overcome as a zoo manager. You'll need to brave harsh landscapes: the mountainous Norway set in the Tundra biome, and the arid Mexico, based in the Desert biome. These two zoos come with their own stories and challenges, which you'll need to deal with to ensure animal welfare and park success.

This Pack also features four brand new Arctic animals: the Polar Bear, Reindeer, Arctic Wolf, and Dall Sheep – all four species come with new challenges and specific needs, so be sure to check the Zoopedia for tips on how to keep them happy and healthy.



Cover your park in a blanket of snow, design an ice sculpture, or build your very own Scandinavian village – there are over 200 new building, scenery, and foliage pieces to choose from and get creative with!

The Arctic Pack will be available to purchase on Steam and Frontier Store for £7.99 ($9.99, €9.99). Please note that you'll need to have the Planet Zoo base game in order to download and play this extra content. Update 1.1.0 will be free for all players.

Thanks to our wonderful community for all of your support since our launch! Keep your eyes on our forums and social channels for all the news and announcements about Planet Zoo, and make sure to tune into our livestreams!

Hayo Zookeepers!

It's the most wonderful time of the year, and it's only fitting that we celebrate with our Planet Zoo community! We're pleased to announce that free Update 1.1 is coming to Planet Zoo on 17 December 2019!

Thanks to your feedback, this free update includes a variety of different features; here's a small overview, to show you why they've been implemented and how they may affect your gameplay!



Slow Animal Aging
We've received some feedback regarding the in-game time in Planet Zoo. We'd like to thank you all for giving us your perspective on what speed you'd like to see the animals age, as it has helped us create a solution that we believe everyone will enjoy! Slow Animal Aging is a setting that can be found in the Gameplay section of the Options menu, and you can use it to alter the rate at which your animals age: up to five times slower than normal. This will not only affect aging, but also how quickly the animals mature, how long they gestate for, the amount of time between mating attempts, and how long it takes for their star rating to increase. However, we'd like to highlight that animals will still display all of their other behaviours at the same rate as they do now; this will not be affected by the age setting. Using Slow Animal Aging will slow down the rate things are happening in your zoo, giving you fewer animal births and deaths to deal with. This setting will be available in all modes: Career, Sandbox, Franchise and Challenge. Upon using the slider, the aging of your animals will become disconnected from the in-game years that pass. This is deliberate, not a bug.


Immediate Family on Animal Information Panels
We are introducing immediate animal family information, which you can see by selecting an animal and viewing their social tab, included in their information panel. Through this, you will be able to learn of an animal's parentage, siblings and direct descendants. This should help prevent inbreeding in zoos and keep your animals healthy!


Animal Pack Behaviour
We have introduced pack structures specific to canines - this applies to Timber Wolves and African Wild Dogs. Alphas are stable within a pack structure, and members won't normally fight unless they are overcrowded. All juveniles will be added to the pack structures. All pack members will be listed in the animal UI.


New Heat Maps
We've also created more Heat Maps, which should help you in all aspects of managing your zoo! These Heat Maps involve crime, staff happiness, animal breeding, habitat cleanliness and updates to negative impacts, such as litter and thrown food. These will all be available to you in the Heat Map tab (H), and can help you keep your zoo as prestige as possible.


Improved Social Behaviours
The team have added new social interactions for the Ring-Tailed Lemur and Red Ruffed Lemur, meaning you'll see the Lemurs interact with each other, both adult to adult and adult to juvenile. Make sure your animals have enough space to display their behaviour theatres and are happy in all aspects, and they will be able to perform their social interactions!


News Feed
We are introducing a News Feed to the Planet Zoo home page, which will update you on any announcements you should be aware of! These will include maintenance information and news updates.


Management Updates
We've added new alerts to the game, which will help point out any issues with the setup of your zoo - something we hope will help you better identify what's happening with your parks. A new High Alert will notify players when something that will have a tremendously negative effect on your zoo is happening, such as if an animal escapes or if all Keeper Huts are closed. This High Alert will pop up in the centre of your screen, but can be switched off in the options.

All Alerts can now be switched off on a per category basis; they've been grouped in the options menu.

A new crime management page has been added to the Zoo Overview management screen - this tab will display and locate vandalised items in your zoo.

Refunds have now been modified, and now have a breakdown of costs in the Zoo finance screen. If a guest has spent less than half of their allotted time in the zoo before going home due to low happiness, they will receive a refund. If an animal escapes and the guest flees, they will receive a refund that's proportional to the time they've spent in the zoo. Innocent guests ejected from the park will receive a full refund. Additionally, unhappy guests will not donate as much money to your zoo.



Aurora Borealis
Our team have created a beautiful in-game Aurora Borealis, also known as the Northern Lights, which you can see while in the Tundra biome! Keep your eye on the night sky to see them, as they are truly a sight to behold! We're looking forward to seeing your gorgeous screenshots of this natural phenomenon! However, it is important for us to highlight that this feature will only be available in High-Ultra Graphic settings.


Ice Cream Costume
An Ice Cream Costume is available to all players to dress up their avatars!


More Creativity!
Of course, for all the master builders among us, we're adding a complete ice & snow rock set, enrichment items like a snow ball and a Christmas present, new winter foliage, and ice pathing.

These features will arrive alongside a huge number of gameplay tweaks and bug fixes, which the team have been working hard on in the past few weeks - the full Update Notes will be posted on 17 December when the update goes live. There might be another surprise in store for you as well, so do keep an eye out for any exciting announcements soon.

Hello Zookeepers!

Update 1.0.4 is now available and will address some of the issues you raised in your feedback following Update 1.0.3.

Update Notes:

• Revert increased refund costs
  
• Fixed sorting issue in the animal management list
  

Thank you for all your feedback so far. As always, if you encounter any issues please be sure to let our developers know on our Issue Tracker so they can investigate as soon as possible.

Hello Zookeepers!

Update 1.0.3 is now available for Planet Zoo and contains over 400 fixes and updates! We've condensed all those fixes down into this bitesize bundle of information to make things easier for you! You'll find a number of fixes for crashes, water treatment balancing, and a load of new options for Sandbox Mode so you can focus more on your animals' happiness!

Here are the Update Notes:

Planet Zoo - 1.0.3 Update Notes

This update contains over 400 fixes and updates.

Stability

• Further crash and stability fixes.
  
• Fixed crash on frontend.
  

Sandbox

• Added a series of new options to customise your play -
  
  • Power usage
    
  • Water treatment
    
  • Fence degradation
    
  • Predation/fear
    
  • Death by old age
    
  • Staff happiness degradation
    
  • Staff energy degradation
    
  • Animal welfare needs
    
  • Maximise guest happiness
    
  • Freeze guest needs
    
• Guest limit setting now added to sandbox and challenge mode too.
  
• Unlocked assets in scenarios when they are loaded in sandbox and challenge mode.
  
• Fixed issue with assets grouped with guest entrances not being able to be deleted.

Facilities

• Balanced water treatment facilities. They should now clean dirty water more effectively.
  

Inspector

• Fixed bug with the inspector incorrectly reporting dehydrated and starving animals.
  

Animals

• Fixed animals being able to be dehydrated whilst swimming.
  
• Fixed bug when cancelling an animal move from the vet surgery which could cause the animal to become stuck.
  
• Fixed bug whereby small animals navigating over scenery could end up inside it.
  
• Fixed issue where animals could become stuck in vet surgery when player cancels moving them whilst they are receiving treatment.
  
• Balanced exhibit animal defecation rates.
  
• Various animation fixes and polish.
  
• Fixed issue when entering and exiting Ansel whilst in orbit camera the camera could relocate to a distant point.
  

Feeders

• Suspended high grazer occupancy increased from 1 to 4 animals.
  

Staff

• Fixed bug with small barrel feeder which could cause the keeper to flip upside down when refilling it.
  
• Added staff thought for staff that can't reach their workzone.
  
• Fixed further staff animation issues.
  
• Fix for vendor becoming stuck when undoing deletion of a shop.
  

Guests

• Fixed protesters and some guests in queues not fleeing escaped animals.
  
• Fixed bug causing guests to sometimes pop in to the air whilst walking.
  

Scenarios

• Updated the layout of scenario 4, adding staff buildings, staff and path layout, and lowered objective requirements.
  
• Updated workzones in scenario 5 and reduced gold objective requirements.
  
• Further balancing of scenario 7.
  

UI

• Fixed further instance that could cause pressing 'X' to stop toggling between rotate and movement modes.
  
• Added notifications for keepers in workzones which don't contain exhibits or habitats.
  
• Fixed 'Release to wild' option being available on animal info panel for animals that have been bought for cash.
  
• Fixed bug causing the time/weather UI close 'X' button to become unresponsive.
  
• Fixed issue where 'Navigable Area' would not update on an animal's info panel whilst it was climbing.
  
• Fixed bug where typing in the loan repayment amount was being reset to the lowest repayments.
  
• Reduced amount of notifications for exhibit animals mating.
  
• Added option to hide blueprints in browser categories.
  
• Updated 'sort' setting in various UI to be retained when switching between tabs.
  
• Fixed bug when selecting certain areas of the globe in the frontend could cause the globe to flip upside-down.
  
• Fixed missing 'Call Mechanic' button on transport station info panel.
  
• Fixed bug with 'Send to Storage' button sometimes being inactive in animal info panel.
  
• Fixed misreporting of food costs on habitat info panel.
  

Franchise Mode

• Added fanfare for community challenge rewards.
  

Editing

• Improved performance when moving train via multiselect button.
  
• Bins and donation boxes should now be easier to place on undulating terrain.
  

Avatars

• Fixed missing torso when using avatar costumes on slim female avatars.
  

Audio
Various bug fixes and polish, including -

• Added new ambient music tracks.
  
• Tweaked the “eeuw” reaction behaviour to pooping.
  
• Added a sub mix for headphones / stereo.
  
• More crowd variations and individual reactions.
  
• UI mix pass and additional audio.
  
• Fixed an issue with ambient speakers self-obstructing and muffling the sound.
  
• More variations to animal sounds
  

Localisation

• Various localisation fixes.
  

Thank you for your continued support and for sharing all your amazing screenshots and animal habitats!

Hello Zookeepers,

Thank you for your continued feedback and reports since the launch of Planet Zoo. We have a new update available today which will address the issue some of you highlighted where transferring a hungry animal could result in a much larger food cost than usual.

General Fix

• When moving hungry animals they will be automatically fed. The calculation for how much the food was costing was incorrect and would cause larger animals’ food costs to be significantly higher than they should.
  

Please be sure to continue sharing any feedback you have on our forums here or any bugs/issues you encounter on our Issue Tracker. We're now working on Update 1.0.3 which will address a larger amount of bugs and issues; we'll keep you posted!🦁