Planet Zoo received a sizeable update today that apparently contains more than 400 fixes and updates, including plenty of squashed bugs and a bunch of new options that will let you further customise your sandbox zoos. After having a great time during beta, I've cooled on it since launch thanks to some bugs and management woes, so I'm hoping this will help me get my zoos back on track.
There are lots of little tweaks, like suspended grazers now being able to serve up to four animals instead of one, UI fixes and scenario improvements, but the headline attraction is the new list of Sandbox mode options, which you can check out below.
- 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
The guest limit setting has also been added to both Sandbox and Challenge modes, along with unlocked assets from scenarios.
Planet Zoo is a very playful, chipper game, so dead animals cause a dramatic change in tone and, frankly, make me very gloomy, so I couldn't be happier with the ability to let them live forever. As it should be. This update specifically lets you stop them dying of old age, though they can still die for other reasons. Luckily there's already an option to cancel death entirely.
The Sandbox mode is where you'll want to go if you don't want to worry about cash or other limitations, letting you run free and design whatever kind of zoo you fancy. Challenge mode was added after beta feedback and is essentially the same as Franchise mode, but it's offline and doesn't let you run multiple zoos.
Update 1.0.3 is available now, and you can check out the rest of the patch notes here.
