"We don't want to simplify it and make it easy, that's not where we're at": Planet Zoo 2 developer on approachability, animal improvements, and all new habitats

After seeing Planet Zoo 2 gameplay behind closed doors, I've often thought about its sag mechanics. It's a word that made the developers at Frontier laugh and wince at the same time, chuckling that they really couldn't call it that at launch. But, despite the connotations, it really does play a key part in one of the big new additions for Planet Zoo 2 - the aviaries.

These huge new habitats are built on the enclosure mechanics from the original game, but with a key difference being canopies that you can craft as roofs to keep your new feathered pals safely within. Made from essentially gigantic nets, you're given full free-reign to position poles wherever you want around the enclosure to hold the net aloft or adjust the way they're rotated or tilted. Which brings me to that all-important sag mechanic - aka, how the net drapes or sags between poles. You can swap out the canopies for glass or other materials, too. The effect is pretty cool, especially when you realize these new enclosures are completely explorable on foot by your guests.

Image 1 of 3

For me, looking up is often what makes a great zoo or aquarium experience. There's something about having enclosures that you can walk inside with butterflies or birds flying overhead, or being inside one of those tunnels at an aquarium that lets sharks, stingrays, and other water friends swim overhead. Planet Zoo 2 really plays with that experience, adding so much more verticality to your zoo builds than the first game ever made possible.

It's particularly palpable when the developers whizz us round to one of the new aquarium habitats that are also coming with Planet Zoo 2. This aquarium they've built is easily four or five times the height of the guests, with turtles, shoals of fish, and other aquatic creatures floating around inside it - and even a scuba-clad staff member too, sponging the glass clean. There's a shipwreck, huge rock formations, plants and more, and I'm really glad they linger on the view as they really are stunning to watch. Plus, you can absolutely make aquarium tunnels, too.

"It was really clear that at the top of the wish list of things that the community wanted in the sequel were aquariums and aviaries," explains Gareth Hughes, game director on Planet Zoo 2. But in terms of actually getting them in the game, "it was really confidence that we could technically deliver them - feeling that we could do justice to the navigation and motion of the animals. And obviously, that we could portray the actual structures in a way that made sense for the game".

It's interesting the way Frontier Developments has approached the aquariums in particular, with residents essentially split into two categories. There are 'hero' fish of sorts, like the Hawksbill Turtle, or the brilliant but goofy-looking Sunfish, which will have all the usual animal welfare requirements of the Planet Zoo games. But then there are also shoals of fish, which are treated as a group rather than as individuals. It helps keep your aquariums feeling full and really alive, without you having to drown in animal care requirements.

A roaring success

Because you certainly will be busier in Planet Zoo 2, as the sequel is making major changes to animal behavior.

"Pretty much the most important thing in Planet Zoo is the animals," adds Hughes. "We've always wanted to represent them in a really authentic way, both in terms of how they look in the game, how they behave in the game, but also how you manage and look after them. A really important part of the game loop is animal welfare."

Along with advancements in fur, scale, and feather tech to make all your zoo residents look their best, Planet Zoo 2 is making major improvements to animal animations and behavior. The way your animals will interact with their enclosures, environments, and each other has been worked on a lot, with the chimpanzees moving on their climbing frames being the prime example of this in our preview. They can now hang off, sleep on, or interact in other ways with the beams on those frames too, which will no doubt make watching your animals even more enjoyable.

In terms of behavior, there are a lot of new improvements when it comes to welfare. In Planet Zoo 2, you'll be able to physically see the mood of your animals just by looking at them or listening to the sounds they're making.

"As we moved into development of Planet Zoo 2, one of the other new pieces of technology we had access to was a brand new animation system, and that allowed us to do all sorts of new tricks with the animals and get some really, really amazing results. One of those is basically layered animations that allow the animals to be much, much more expressive. In our demo, they've conveniently forgotten to give the tiger any water, and it's clearly subdued, sulky and inactive. It might sound like a comedy take on animal welfare, but it's such a realistic way of gauging your animals' moods.

"That's something that we could never have done in the original Planet Zoo. It's a massive sort of step forward in terms of the realism of the animals," says Hughes, explaining that these new animations allows the team to create "much more expressive" creatures than ever before.

It should also dial down what Hughes calls some of the "crazy volatility" that was present in some of the zoos in the original game. "It's all about things being readable. Something is happening, I understand what's happening, and I understand why it's happening, and I understand what I need to do to fix it. That kind of summarizes our philosophy toward the zoo management side. It's really just making it a more accessible experience without sort of dumbing it down in any way. We don't want to simplify it and make it easy, that's not where we're at."

Creative vision

The team is also hoping that the approachability changes they're making with Planet Zoo 2 also extend to building the zoos themselves. The scale and scope of these parks are now much, much bigger than in the original game, with the park we're shown being an Indonesian island-inspired zoo with different heights, weaving paths, entertainment areas, and expansive habitats.

Hughes says that they're "making sure everyone can create awesome-looking stuff in the game. We want to keep a high ceiling so our dedicated players can continue to create amazing things and really spend the time and effort to make those things. But we want to drop the floor a little bit to make things easier for most players to come in and build, whether it's structures, environments, or habitats."

I've not had a chance to go hands-on, but I really hope that's true. It's one of my key frustrations with the original game: creating things from scratch is really fiddly, awkward, and sometimes seriously frustrating - even on PC with keyboard and mouse. And that's certainly a sentiment shared by the community too.

To remedy that, the team has also integrated the community-powered Workshop, where you can go and grab not only dev-built blueprints for all sorts of building elements, from habitats to facilities, but also community-made creations too, all curated specially by the team at Frontier.

Beyond the park

But I think for me, the real allure of Planet Zoo 2 is how Frontier highlights its focus on conservation. Narratively, the campaign this time around is getting you to play as a member of an organization known as FEN - or the Fauna and Ecosystems network - with the goal being to set up a network of zoos to renew a load of wildlife reserves. Any animal you then release into the wild from your zoos will then join these playable nature reserves.

"You're not just visiting these places, you're actually rewilding them, you're repopulating them, so they're integrated into the wider game loop," says Hughes. "But [it's] also just an amazing experience to see the animals from your zoos moved into that new context, and seeing those animals in their natural environments with other animals around them that perhaps in a zoo setting you wouldn't necessarily put together. It has quite an emotional impact. We've certainly felt it on the dev team, seeing this come together. It looks and feels really authentic."

Watching the animals co-exist in a safari-style nature reserve even just for a few minutes was magical, and I can just imagine the emotional tug watching your animals go live their new lives somewhere else rather than just watching them disappear once you hit the 'release to the wild' button.

From everything I've seen so far, Planet Zoo 2 is going to be quite the sequel, as it's building on everything that made the original game great with more attention to making it a better game for more players. And making the animals even better too, of course. Thankfully, with the game launching on October 13 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X, we don't have too long to wait.

Take a look at our new games calendar for what's coming up next!