Hello Zookeepers!

It's been two days since Planet Zoo's launch and your initial reaction has been phenomenal! We've been loving all of the creations, screenshots and animal details you have shared! We're so grateful for the feedback and reports you have been sending in and the team has been working hard to resolve as many issues as possible.

We've now rolled out our first update for Planet Zoo, designed to fix some of the most immediate issues which have been raised. Please don't worry if an issue you have reported isn't listed; we are still hard at work on your reports and feedback and will have more updates coming soon! Please take a look below for the full update notes:

Stability
Added several crash and stability fixes, including -

• Crash when deleting pick up based enrichment item while an animal is using it;
  
• Crash when moving staff buildings;
  
• Crash when moving animals to quarantine;
  
• Crash when selecting the Inspector notification;
  
• Crash when signing up to newsletter;
  
• Crash when deleting shops;
  
• Crash when moving exhibits;
  
• Crash when animals are released to wild;
  
• Crash when using 'locate' button from objectives;
  
• Crash when switching between fullscreen and borderless.

Scenarios

• Fixed some objectives in Scenario 3 of Career Mode auto-completing.

Franchise Mode & Main Menu

• The newsletter sign-up is now hidden during the welcome screen. This will prevent any issues from signing up before creating your avatar.
  
• Fixed issue with profanity filter not allowing players to create franchise zoos. We have also improved messaging regarding this issue.

Staff

• Fixed issue with multiple mechanics not repairing vandalised objects efficiently.

Animals

• Various improvements have been made to climbing (Sorry flying bears!)

UI

• Zoo tax is now shown on the Zoo Overview menu to give you greater information on your finances.

Guests

• Fix for guest avatar heads disappearing.

Rendering

• Fix rendering issues caused by ultra wide displays.

General

• We are aware of an issue where the wrong image is displayed for the Community Challenge (it should be the tigers!). If this is the case, please restart your Steam client as it's a caching issue; do let us know if the issue persists!

As mentioned, this is only the first of our post-launch updates for Planet Zoo. We'll be sure to keep you informed regarding the next ones! Thank you again for your continued support and feedback!

It feels like forever ago, but it's only been seven months since we originally announced Planet Zoo; we'd been working on the game for over two years, and at that point we finally got to share what we had in store for you.


Today, on 5 November 2019, Planet Zoo is live!


Planet Zoo is an absolute passion project for us as a studio; many of us at Frontier have grown up playing similar titles, taking care of our zoos and our animals (or you know, occasionally releasing them to chase out the guests!), so for us to have the chance to bring Planet Zoo to a whole new generation was very special.

Planet Zoo is all about running a successful zoo, in whichever way you prefer to play. In Career Mode, you are joining a cast of original characters on a journey around the world facing different challenges depending on where your zoo is located. We've taken great care to bring you a fun, engaging, and original story filled with adventure and progressively harder objectives. We've also got Franchise Mode, which is aimed at those who are keen to work together and trade animals with a global network of other players, and run multiple zoos. Franchise Mode also contains weekly Community Challenges, which are exciting objectives that run from Tuesdays to Sundays and result in an exciting new outfit for your avatar if successful! If you prefer to keep the challenge to yourself and your own zoo, we've got Challenge Mode for you - here you'll find specific Zoo Challenges on a limited budget. And finally, of course we have Sandbox Mode for all those who want to build and create without any limitations! Let your imagination truly run wild...

Animal welfare is at the heart of Planet Zoo. You are tasked with creating the perfect habitats, monitoring your animal's individual needs, and ensuring you have enough Zookeepers, Veterinarians, and other Staff to take care of all of your zoo's inhabitants. We've created the Zoopedia, an in-game hub which hosts all the information on every animal species in your zoo. You can find their preferred surroundings, foliage and temperature, their conservation status, and even which other species they could co-exist with!

A successful zoo is not just about happy and healthy animals - you also want to take care of your guests so that they give your zoo a high rating! Place Shops and other guest facilities to make sure they have spaces to eat and rest, have enough benches and bins, and hide away your Staff facility buildings from sight. Guests will want to see the animals too, so find the balance between a good view and an animal's privacy - and don't forget to place Education signs so guests can learn about the animals, as well as Donation Boxes which contribute to your cash flow and animal conservation!

And if you're simply into building the most amazing structures and habitats, we've got the Steam Workshop all set up for you. There's lots of building and scenery pieces for you to use, so anything from custom entrances to climbing structures can be shared with the entire community. We've even made it possible to add terrain to Habitat blueprints, so you can create the perfect habitat and upload it straight to the Workshop. We cannot wait to see what you're going to create!

Of course there's so much more to Planet Zoo, and we're really excited you can now finally play the full game and explore everything yourself. We will be here every step of the way with weekly livestreams, Community Challenges, developer interviews, and more! We'd like to encourage you to keep using the official forums and social channels for your feedback - we're reading everything. Let us know what you discover, which animals steal your heart (they will!), and share your creations with us.

Thank you so much for your ongoing support, your passion and enthusiasm about the game, and all of your helpful feedback and comments. Now go and create the zoo of your dreams!

❤️
The Planet Zoo team.

Planet Zoo - Launch Update Notes

There have been many updates and bug fixes to Planet Zoo since our Beta; here are some of the more noteworthy things we'd like to call out before you jump into the game!

General

• When launching the game after clicking PLAY in Steam, you may encounter a delay where you see a white screen prior to the game appearing.
  
• If you have an existing Scenario 1 save from the Beta, please delete your save for the best play experience.
  
• Blueprints from the Beta should be available on the Steam Workshop. Some asset pivot points may have changed, which means your blueprint might require moving and resaving.
  
• Please create an avatar before signing up to the newsletter.

Animals

• Further balancing to breeding rates.
  
• Average animal longevity has been raised.
  
• Improvements to animal boxing and unboxing.
  
• Further social interaction animations added.
  
• Big cats now have retractable claws (except for the Cheetah, as they are not supposed to have retractable claws).

Staff

• Keepers will work out how much food they need to prepare for a habitat based on how many animals are in the habitat. They will then prioritise filling enrichment feeders before standard feeders. This can mean that if all of the prepared food is placed in enrichment feeders, the standard feeders won't be filled!
  
• There have been many improvements to keeper feeding behaviour. Keepers can become tired and won't perform their duties if they are not rested, so make sure you let them have some time off at a Staff Centre now and again.
  
• Mechanics should now fix broken facilities more reliably.

Franchise Mode & Frontend

• The Animal Exchange can now be filtered.
  
• Improved notifications when players are unable to purchase animals from the Animal Market.

Research

• Vets now stop researching once they reach advanced research and must be manually re-assigned.
  
• Mechanics will now perform continuous research until they complete the category they are assigned to.

Help, UI & Notifications

• Planet Zoo has extensive help files; these are a great way to learn how to run your zoo smoothly.
  
• Additional notifications including animal pregnancy/birth.
  
• Improved setting ticket prices

Hello Zookeepers!

We can't wait to share Planet Zoo with you in just a few days! On 5 November we are launching globally and you will finally be able to play through the entire story in Career Mode, develop your global zoo network in Franchise Mode, test your zoo management skills with Challenge Mode, and unleash your limitless creativity in Sandbox Mode!

You're probably as excited as we are, and we know many of you have been asking what time the game will go live. Today we're happy to share the global Planet Zoo release times with you, so you know exactly when you can start playing:

• Los Angeles 4:00 AM PST
  
• Calgary 5:00 AM MST
  
• Chicago 6:00 AM CST
  
• Mexico City 6:00 AM CST
  
• New York 7:00 AM EST
  
• Toronto 7:00 AM EST
  
• Rio de Janeiro 9:00 AM BRT
  
• London 12:00 PM GMT
  
• Paris 1:00 PM CET
  
• Athens 2:00 PM EET
  
• Cape Town 2:00 PM SAST
  
• Moscow 3:00 PM MSK
  
• Istanbul 3:00 PM TRT
  
• Dubai 4:00 PM GST
  
• New Dehli 5:30 PM IST
  
• Bangkok 7:00 PM ICT
  
• Beijing 8:00 PM CST
  
• Seoul 9:00 PM KST
  
• Tokyo 9:00 PM JST
  
• Brisbane 10:00 PM AEST
  
• Sydney 11:00 PM AEDT
  
• Auckland 1:00 AM NZDT (Wednesday 6 November)

*Please note release is global and pre-loading is not possible.


We've also got an update on Beta saved games progress as well as your Steam Workshop items. As mentioned in the Beta Information post, we previously weren't sure that your saved games would function on launch day. We're now happy to report that your Career Mode - Scenario 1 save file will still be valid, however for the best play experience we do recommend starting over again – whilst we have tested many different saves we cannot 100% guarantee all save files will work. Franchise Mode save files will no longer function, so you are free to start over your new Franchise!

In terms of the Planet Zoo Steam Workshop blueprints that were uploaded during the Beta, they will stay on the Steam Workshop and should all work in-game. Beta blueprints are marked with a "Beta" tag on the Workshop. If your blueprint doesn’t function in game, it may be because some of the assets have been updated and might need re-positioning.

Lastly, for those who have played the Beta, you will automatically be credited 500 Conservation Credits to your account as a thank you for pre-ordering the Deluxe Edition and providing us with such amazing feedback.

As per our recently posted November Streaming Schedule, we will be counting down to launch from 10:30 AM GMT in our official Launch Livestream - be sure to tune in for some chats with the developers and awesome prizes!

See you soon!

Hello Zookeepers!

The Planet Zoo Beta has now come to a close and what an experience it has been! The creativity you have shown in your animal habitats and zoo layouts has been an absolute joy to witness!

You've have all been incredible with the feedback and reports you have shared with us and thanks to your efforts we were able to introduce three updates (and one update of an update) to help resolve some of the most important issues raised during the Beta. We will continue using your feedback in the next few weeks ahead of launch to make sure that Planet Zoo on 5 November is the best it can possibly be! Of course, we'll continue the hard work even after launch as well.

Over the next few weeks we'll do our best to keep you posted about all things Planet Zoo; there's still stuff to talk about and we want to keep hearing from you! You are still welcome to share any feedback you have remaining here and include any suggestions or wishlist items you might have here.

Also, do make sure to tune in every Friday on our Facebook channel for our Facebook Friday sessions and say hello in the chat.

Thank you again for an amazingly informative and fun two weeks! We can't wait to see the amazing zoos you create this November!

Hello Zookeepers!

Thank you for the reports you've sent in since our latest update. We've now released Update 1.3.1 which should resolve some crashes and other issues you have highlighted to us.

• Fix for juveniles not growing into adults;
  
• Further crash fixes.

Please be sure to report any other issues to us via our Issue Tracker so we can investigate them right away!

Hello Zookeepers!

Thank you for all the reports and feedback you have shared during the Beta. We have a new update for you today that we hope will improve your Beta experience further.

• A number of enrichment items are locked in the Beta, and will therefore always show as locked in the research UI!
  
• If Zookeepers are tired and they can't go to a Staff Centre to rest, then they won't perform their tasks (including inspecting and feeding).

• Further improvements to Zookeeper feeding behaviour;
  
• Mitigation against an issue causing finances to suddenly drop by large amounts - if you still see this issue, please raise it on the issue tracker and submit your save game;
  
• Vets and Mechanics will now remain assigned to research when they go to perform another job or go to the staff centre. Once done they will return to performing research where they left off;
  
• Further balancing to breeding;
  
• Improvements to Zookeeper cleaning behaviour and cleanliness ratings;
  
• Entrance prices are now saved correctly;
  
• Fixed an issue where guests were walking on staff paths;
  
• Fixed an issue whereby path and terrain UI will not open if you have opened them twice in a row beforehand;
  
• Fixed an issue when autocompleting transport rides;
  
• Fixed an issue where deceased animals become stuck in the Vet's surgery;
  
• Fixed an issue leading to marketing campaigns not being able to be cancelled;
  
• Various crash fixes.

Please be sure to keep sharing your feedback, it's been hugely helpful for our teams as we aim to keep improving your experience with the Planet Zoo Beta!

Hi all,

We often talk about how incredible our community are. Whether it’s designing the most amazing creations for the workshop or sharing your passion in one of the many hubs and communities around Planet Zoo, community breathes life into our games.

That’s why this Beta is so important. Being able to have thousands of people playing, testing and giving feedback ahead of launch is an incredibly powerful process and one that we as a team always listen to and consider.

We’ve seen some feedback and discussion regarding Franchise Mode and the fact that it is always online. As we mentioned in our previous post, Franchise Mode working online is an important requirement in order to utilise all of the community and online features. HOWEVER, we are also aware that many of you would like to have the option to play a Sandbox-style gameplay mode which includes many of the Franchise features that offer a greater managerial challenge, in an offline experience.

That’s why we are pleased to say that thanks to your feedback, we will be increasing the number of game modes at launch from 3 to 4 modes. We will still keep the Career, Sandbox (which will include a number of options such as no breeding, no ageing and no animal death etc) and Franchise Mode but we will be adding a fourth.

This all-new, currently unnamed, mode will allow you to enjoy much of the Franchise experience, without the online requirements.

This new mode will still include a full economy with both dollars and Conservation Credits, guest needs, Research, Education, animals and more all with the ability to create your zoo, with your vision from the ground up. Naturally, with this being an offline game mode, there are certain features that will only be available in Franchise Mode. These include: Trading between players, Leaderboards zoos and Community Challenges.

This addition to the game is directly thanks to your feedback. The Planet Zoo development team are always focused on making sure the experience for our community is as great as it can be and we’re excited to be able to bring this additional game mode to all players as part of the Planet Zoo launch on 5 November.

We hope you continue to enjoy the second week of our Beta. It’s been a fantastic experience from everyone on the Planet Zoo team to see so many incredible videos, creations and comments. Please do remember to continue submitting bugs and issues on our issue tracker to help us in the run-up to launch.

Many thanks!

Hello Zookeepers!

Our developers continue to be hard at work reviewing your feedback and using it to make improvements and fixes to the issues raised so far. Here's all you need to know about the latest update!

• Fixed a crash when making a new franchise game
  
• Fixed a crash when going in to the orbit camera of an escaped animal
  
• Fixed an economy issue resulting in instant multi-million dollar zoos - sorry!
  
• Fixed a poor juvenile Bengal Tiger distorting when playing with an enrichment box
  
• Improved some issues with enrichment feeder capacities leading to other feeders not being filled by the keeper
  
• Fixed animal birth and death notifications
  
• Further animal breeding balancing
  
• Keepers who are already going to prepare food will continue to do so when tired, before visiting the staff room
  
• Balanced the failure rate of power facilities
  
• Fixed issue with path widths not changing when set to ft
  
• Fixed issue with Hippos getting stuck whilst swimming
  
• Fixed save state on contraceptive button in the compare mates UI
  
• Fixed a crash when double clicking train camera
  
• Fixed an issue with the Bengal Tiger objective when adjusting barrier height to 4M
  
• Fixed franchise zoos not being able to be closed
  
• Various crash fixes

We are currently investigating the following:

General

• Frame rate improvements ongoing
  
• Autocompleting a transport ride can lead to stalls, we advise against using this option currently
  
• Entrance prices are being reset
  
• Infrequent crash seen when deleting a habitat

Scenario related

• You can block your progress completing the scenario by releasing animals to the wild too early
  
• Hint - Call keepers to your habitat if animal welfare is low

Save related

• A delay when saving a zoo can make it appear that it isn’t saving when it is, please be patient

Animal related

• Animal disease is turned off for Beta
  
• Sometimes animals can be boxed, but the option to unbox is unavailable. You can get round this by moving the animal to storage and placing back in a habitat.
  
• Animals sometimes jump through barriers

Staff related

• Staff are not automatically placed back on research if they have to re-energise at the Staff Centre
  
• Staff can get stuck walking. This can be fixed by moving them.

UI related

• Path and Terrain UI will not open if you have opened them twice in a row beforehand. If you open other UI and try again this fixes the issue.

Thank you for your continued feedback. We will keep you informed of any new updates or changes in the Beta!

Hello Zookeepers!

Thank you for all your awesome feedback on Planet Zoo so far. We have our first update for the Beta available now which will resolve a number of crash issues that have been reported to us. We will continue to investigate the feedback and reports you have shared with us and will keep you updated with any news!

Fixes

• Fixed a crash when clicking on a boxed animal in traversable heat map mode
  
• Fixed a crash whilst loading a saved game from Scenario 1
  
• Fixed a crash that occurs shortly after enabling contraceptives on a female with "Offspring Imminent"
  
• Fixed crash after African Male Buffalo jumps into water
  
• Fixed a crash when deleting a workshop that is in use by staff
  
• Fixed a crash when firing Vet/Mechanic whilst researching
  
• Fixed the Hippopotamus occasionally getting stuck while swimming
  
• Fixed a crash when deleting a large number of items
  
• Fixed a crash when selecting the second ride camera button
  
• Fixed a crash when selecting 'Compare Mates' after adopting an objective animal during scenario 1
  
• Fixed a crash when placing down a conservation education board
  
• Balancing on birth rates - Ongoing
  
• General crash and stability bug fixes

Keep the feedback coming!