Planet Zoo 2 is the latest creative management sim from Frontier and delivers a huge menagerie of content where your creativity can run wild. A direct sequel to 2024’s Planet Zoo Console Edition and the close cousin of Planet Coaster 2, the game delivers what I have come to expect from Frontier’s creative management games: a robust tycoon experience, ludicrously huge potential for custom building, and a warm, immersive experience that’s fun to play. Once more, you will build and run your own zoo (duh!), but there is more here than just a typical tycoon game loop.

You will also focus on animal welfare, conservation, and education. There are two main zones you will play in: zoos and wildlife reserves. Zoos are what you expect – build animal exhibits and maintain them for the visiting public. Wildlife reserves are new to the series and are wild habitats you can release your animals into from your zoos. In wildlife reserves, you can explore both on foot and zip around in a buggy to observe and photograph your released animals in their wild habitats.

You can also fully customise your wildlife reserves, using the terrain and vegetation editing controls, and you will need to design specific biomes to accommodate different species of animals. Speaking of observing the animals, I was amazed by the animations both in reserves and in zoos. Each animal responds to the environment it’s in and it’s fun seeing them interact with feeding trays and toys. In the reserve, I spent ages creeping up on shy zebras to try and take the perfect group photo, and I was surprised by how engaging this was.

I couldn’t find a way to access this first-person photography in the actual zoos, though. When it comes to building your zoos, there are three main game modes offered to you. In campaign mode you move between a variety of partially prebuilt zoos to accomplish set objectives, the first few of which act as the game’s tutorial. You don’t have to complete all a park’s objectives at once; you can revisit previous levels (saves) without going through the main menu using the game’s new hub mode which made me feel as though all the zoos were one interconnected organisation. Then there is the highly customisable sandbox mode where you begin with the classic empty field and start building from scratch, either with unlimited funds in creative mode or as a classic tycoon experience in challenge mode. You can build a zoo however you like here with the only limit being the complexity meter which, like in Planet Coaster, is the console version’s trade off to ensure a good performance.

Personally, I didn’t even get close to the limit. The third mode is Franchise which is an online experience where you can build an interconnected network of zoos and trade animals with other players around the globe. I haven’t spent much time in this mode yet, but it’ll have a dynamic animal marketplace and regular community goals to feel different to the traditional sandbox mode. Regardless of what mode you’re in, you build zoos in mostly the same way. You lay down paths for visitors and staff to walk along and link up all your attractions. You build enclosures for large animals and exhibitions for small ones (think reptile house) to display them to attendees.

You’ll also need zookeeper huts and veterinary hospitals for your staff, food stalls and toilets for your visitors, as well as power and water filtration systems to keep your zoo running. As with the other Planet games, each ‘thing’ you can build can be highly customised where you have a basic shell and you can attach what feels like thousands of possible scenery options to it to create something completely custom or a real-life recreation. You can build off-grid and have scenery clip though other objects, and new to Planet Zoo 2 you can also rescale scenery objects, so a rock can be the size of a pebble or a double-decker bus to give you an unmatched level of customisation, at least if you’re prepared to learn all the controls. For players who just want to put something together quickly, or like myself, would rather focus on management, there are many prefabs you can plop down to get yourself started.

The new terrain brush allows you to quickly fill areas with random natural-looking vegetation which is a godsend compared to placing each rock individually. The hardest time I had with the game was the learning curve, especially its controls. The downside of having so many options is that the UI feels busy and clustered with many nested menus, and I often found it frustrating to ‘click’ on what I wanted.

The tutorials help with this by highlighting what you need to click, but after that you’re on your own and it can be a real headache until you get used to it. I did test mouse and keyboard support, and they do work in the PS5 version, which is nice. Although not every animal from the previous game is available yet, Planet Zoo 2 now offers aquariums and for the first time you can have fish, turtles, and sharks. There are also new aviaries which allow full-flight birds.

I think these long-requested features will tempt players of the original to come and experience the new offerings in Planet Zoo 2. Conclusion Planet Zoo 2 is a great addition to the ‘Planet’ franchise and a must-have for people who love creative management games. The game offers the extraordinary level of customisation I’ve come to expect from Frontier, and the large number of additions over its predecessor offer plenty to both existing fans and new players alike. The game will no doubt continue to grow over the next few years with updates and DLC, but the base experience alone offers a sturdy foundation to build from.