Planet Zoo 2 is a rich management simulator that demands your full attention

Planet Zoo 2 is for a specific type of game player. On the surface, it’s a lush management simulator that should appeal to those who love animals, zoos or just the act of creating and organising a virtual business. But the exact target audience here is more precise: it’s a game for people who love getting down to nitty-gritty details and organising every part of their day, life and interests.

Planet Zoo 2 is demanding in its core approach. For the right kind of player, the layers of its management systems will be brain-tickling, rewarding, and entirely fun.

Taking your first footsteps through a meaty campaign

You can begin your journey through Planet Zoo 2 by diving straight into sandbox or franchise modes, which allow you to build a park from scratch within limitations you decide for yourself. If you’re familiar with the original Planet Zoo, you’ll mostly have an easy time here; this game isn’t so different and instead builds on what’s come before.

I started with campaign mode, and felt all the better for this decision. It’s a story-based mode that takes you through all of the intricacies of gameplay, down to minute details. What happens if your zoo enclosures break. How to create the perfect temperatures for fish in your aquariums. The importance of park vets. How to keep your guests happy and create a value for money experience.

This is how deeply Planet Zoo 2 engages with its core subject, the art of zoo creation and animal raising.

While zoo simulators of the past have cut some corners in the attempt to buoy breezy, light-hearted experiences, Planet Zoo 2 isn’t concerned with pure freedom. It’s in friction that the game is most interesting – and there’s certainly plenty of that.

As a zoo creator, you must consider so many elements in your day-to-day running of your zoo. Animal welfare should be top of mind, as you create environments with the right temperature, the right enrichment (for food, for play) and enough open space to wander. You must also consider animal health, in case of illness. Sea creatures including fish and turtles must have the right salinity of water, necessitating careful planning and delivery of enclosures.

You must consider what your visitors get out of your zoo. They require entertainment and food, but they also need to gather knowledge. All of your enclosures will need to be accompanied by signs detailing more about animal habitats and behaviours. To learn that, you’ll need to undertake research and development.

There’s so many micro details in zoo management that it’s easy to get wrapped up in circles – but there’s where campaign mode becomes important. In missions led by various charming characters, including one that’s clearly patterned after Robert Irwin, you’ll be slowly and carefully introduced to each aspect of running a successful zoo, while eventually being given the freedom to make choices and strike out on your own.

The campaign mode is fairly linear and rigid for the most part, encouraging you along set activities broken down into bite-sized pieces, and eventually you may want to spread your wings.

To that end, it’s useful to know Planet Zoo 2 has an array of other modes to experiment with, all of which will teach you valuable skills about the minutia of running your zoo.

Getting to grips with sandbox mode

Outside of campaign mode, the next best way to learn Planet Zoo 2 and is to jump into its freeform sandbox mode. This lets you set an array of criteria in your own siloed world. You can turn off money to experiment without restrictions. You can turn off staff dissatisfaction if you want to focus on your animals. You can even play around with animal needs, random events and the requirements to keep your zoo functional.

While playing around with these sandbox toggles too much does reduce the necessary friction that will encourage you to keep building, it’s a great way to learn the ropes and figure out how everything works before taking on more complex challenges, like taking on an online-facing franchise, where you can exchange animals with other players.

Working within sandbox mode, you can learn a lot about Planet Zoo 2. How to create efficient pathing so your zoo attendees don’t get lost. That food shops aren’t immediately profitable, and you probably shouldn’t establish one of every kind, even if it’s for fun. That you can build underground with careful planning and after coming to grips with multi-level terrain systems. That certain kinds of animals aren’t compatible with each other and should absolutely not share enclosures.

In this space, you can also figure out the best ways to staff your zoo, when you should reach out for more animals, and how to create beautiful enclosures without sacrificing the needs of your dependants.

The lessons learned in sandbox mode carry very well over to the other modes, where you can deliver layered, interesting zoos of your own design – or leaning into the designs of others, as found in the game’s easily-accessed online design toolbox. I built my first major zoo in sandbox mode, and then in franchise mode, was buoyed by the creations of other players, who had all spent far more time than I had on developing beautiful zoo structures like reptile houses, rock pools and more.

I still spent hours on the aesthetics, using clever snap-lock and place mechanics to create a vast Australia-inspired zoo full of blue-tongued lizards, cool fish, and a towering aviary. Everyone else in the downloadable designs put me to shame, but it’s always a joy to be able to see what other people are creating and just how extensive the customisation system of Planet Zoo 2 is. I really hope to see bigger and bolder creations in the months to come, as more talented players deliver grander creations.

A light safari-style mode adds a sense of immersion

Where Planet Zoo 2 differs most from the original Planet Zoo, in my mind, is its sense of personality – specifically, the ability to interact with animals and get ‘up close and personal.’ As well as being the benevolent creator of various zoos around the world, this game lets you undertake conservation efforts to release animals into new wildlife reserves.

In these spaces, you’ll explore freely and in first person mode. You can approach various herds of animals living in the wild, take their photos and see them thriving. This mode isn’t particularly robust and could certainly do with more activities to justify its place in the game, but it does add that personal touch and lets you feel closer to your conservation work.

You can see that you’re making an impact, and it’s a very nice touch.

In your zoos, you can also get up close with your animals, noting new behaviours and observing them for signs of distress or any lack of enrichment. While they’re not quite interactive in the traditional sense, it does feel like they have a bit more personality in this game and you can waste plentiful hours watching monkeys climb their enclosures or see lizards lounging in the sun.

It helps that Planet Zoo 2 is pretty gorgeous. Playing on a higher-powered PC, you can see layers of fur, gorgeous feathers, shiny scales and tiny tongues darting in and out. You also get lovely sunset vistas as the day closes, with light dappling your zoo surrounds.

When you’re not stressed about your zoo finances and ensuring every animal is allowed the peace and prosperity to thrive, you can spend time in this game just admiring the world you find yourself in. Surrounded by animals of all kinds, you can watch them play and swim around. You can see their little quirks shine. It’s a real joy, and one that buoys Planet Zoo 2 even when its economy and all its little tasks becomes overwhelming.

With a freedom of choice in how you play, at the very least, you can determine how stressful your experience is. There can be real challenge in balance your finances with the needs of your guests and animals. There can also be a freedom to create, in a sandbox world where the economy doesn’t matter so much.

In whatever way you choose to play, Planet Zoo 2 is a rich, rewarding sandbox, with its management systems always allowing just the right friction for your style.

A PC copy of Planet Zoo 2 was provided and played for the purposes of this review.

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