Planet Zoo

There are two kinds of animal homes in Planet Zoo:

The landscape upon which your zoo is built is completely customisable, with terrain sculpting and painting tools that allow you to modify the zoo to your heart’s content.

Terrain Sculpting

Terrain sculpting allows you to modify the elevation and shape of the landscape within your zoo to craft hills, flatten areas and create scenic vistas to build exhibits and attractions. Some modes will allow you to either start with a flat area to build or an already sculpted area to edit.

The controls of Planet Zoo have been built from the ground up to be accessible and intuitive – including on gamepads.

The best way to learn how to move around your zoo and navigate the various in-game menus is to complete the tutorial as part of Career Mode. This tutorial has been designed to equip you with all the tools you need to get started with Planet Zoo and will introduce you to Bernie Goodwin as you help complete renovations of the beloved zoo, Goodwin House.

Along with difficulty, when selecting Franchise, Challenge or Sandbox modes, the location of your zoo is also chosen when a zoo is first opened. In Career mode, the location of the zoo is set by the narrative.

A zoo's location is defined by the continent and biome it is set in, with the location presenting different modifications to the gameplay.

The choice of continent and biome will impact the following:

Once you select your chosen game mode, you’ll be presented with a few settings, including the difficulty.

Planet Zoo features three difficulty settings allowing you to control the challenge and alter how difficult the game is, choosing between easy, medium or hard.

These difficulty settings are available in all game modes and the difficulty is set before a new scenario or zoo is started. Don’t worry though, if you’re finding it too much of a challenge, the difficulty can also be changed mid-game through the settings menu.

In Planet Zoo you can create, manage, research and develop the zoo of your dreams across four different game modes.

Career Mode

Embark on a globe-trotting campaign mode and progress through a career in zoo management. If you’re new to Planet Zoo, we recommend starting with Career Mode to help you learn the basics.