Let's Build a Zoo Reviews

A little bit difficult to get into (there are tutorials but the UI is not very user-friendly), but once you get used to it, you can build and decorate your zoo without issues. What I really appreciate is random events and choices throughout the gameplay. Some of them give you quest lines and affect your gameplay later on. Overall it´s a good zoo game, in which you can sink in many hours. I´m currently at 20 and have like 5 % of all available animals. It takes time to make money, but you can speed it or binge watch something when playing.

When I first started playing the game, I almost quit because I found the tutorial quite overwhelming. I'm happy that I pushed through because I ended playing a long time! There are some QoL features that could be added to make this game so much more fun, like: - A way to move the enclosures easier (right now, you have to manually move every decorations and items in it before being able to modify the shape, which is a pain...). - Quick keys to make designing your zoo easier. A lot of the game revolves around making a nice looking zoo, but I disliked having to manually move or remove items one at a time when I wanted to modify bigger parts on my zoo to update it. - In the nursery, a way to select a specific kind of offspring between the different possibilities. I spent so much time just managing my nurseries. - Reducing the grind at the end. Once I was able to maximise the busses and the number of visitors, all that was left was to get all the animals and more research points. So I spent hours simply waiting for the in-game time to pass. - Better explanation of everything. I had to look up a lot of information in tutorials and online to better understand the use of different buildings, upgrades, etc. Despite all of that, I spent 50 hours in the game and I really enjoyed it! I stopped before finishing everything because I got sick of the grind, but I might go back at one point to see all the cute animals! The art is really nice, once you get through the tutorial, it's quite straightforward and easy to play. I recommend!

Game is fun and interesting. Keeps you on your toes with issues and unlocking things. Also found cheat code for PC where you can play in free zoo (look on google) which helped me learn more options and things to look forward to in slow start of regular play.

I purchased on sale. Decorate zoo and discover all animal variants. Moral options are fun. Gets overwhelming quickly (managing animal populations b/c of fast reproduction) which I use pause button to deal with. Text is small. Icons (in breeding) are small so some animal variants look the same. You can only move/delete objects one at a time. This is my biggest complaint for quality of life. Otherwise great game with lots of cute collectible animals.

Quite addictive, and maybe it's because I'm used to the old Zoo Tycoon game features, but I find this game to be a bit more challenging when it comes to making money and unlocking new animals. In order to unlock new animals, you must trade variants of the ones you already have, more of which you can adopt from the shelter. Also, in order to unlock decorations and shops, you must wait for your researcher to earn you passive points that you can spend on 'maps' of decorations/buildings/enrichment/etc. for your zoo, so there aren't a lot of options to start with. The humor the developers add to the tasks and newspaper clippings give this game an extra edge to it that makes it fun to share screenshots with friends. You can also choose to either make your zoo ethical or unethical based on the moral choices that are given to you, which wasn't something I was expecting. I'm going to stick to my normal, boring, ethical zoo for now, but maybe in a future play-through I'll make an 'evil' factory zoo just to see what jokes come out of it. I'm only 8 hours in at the time of writing this, and I've already restarted because I didn't like how my first zoo was turning out, but I'm curious to see what else I can unlock as I continue to play. Pros: - Humorous dialogue - Art style is cute - In-game time goes by quickly (may be a con for some) - Very customizable options: Nothing that you place is permanent, so you can move exhibits, buildings, trees, and decorations around as often as you'd like without having to destroy it. You can also go into depth with how ethical your shops are, as well (though I don't think it affects your overall zoo's moral standing) Cons: - Not easy to get new animal species. If you want a specific animal, you'll have to keep countless other animals first, and hope that the chance to trade for your dream animal comes up eventually. - Progression feels a bit slow, but maybe that's because I'm not utilizing all the features the way I'm supposed to? I can't unlock things when I need to, like the incinerator - I have animal corpses in pens at the moment that I can't get rid of... I may update this review as I play on.

Nothing is particularly intuitive (imo) and just was a confusing experience when first playing the game. Never went back to it.

it's a lot of fun! i was surprised at how much i got into it because i'm usually not a huge fan of management-heavy games. i think the game just does a really good job at slowly introducing you to each mechanic via the quests and research system. the one big problem IMO, and the thing that's putting me off from playing again, is the insane amount of maintenance certain species require. i know that's kinda the whole point of the game, but species like rabbits, geese, and ducks tend to require very frequent releasing given how often they reproduce. it really makes me wish there was some kind of automatic release system where you can select certain criteria for release (elderly, keeping males and females of each variant under a certain number, pregnant or not, etc.) maybe there is something like that later in the tech tree, but there's no way for me to tell lol

So many bugs, crashes and incredible tedious management with all animals breeding like bunnies. Almost nothing gets explained, you just have to guess. It takes forever to unlock things that will make some things easier but since all upgrades are hidden on a huge "skill tree" it might take you hoooours to find it.

If you like verbose pop-up ads interrupting your game play experience regularly to barely explain how to play, confusing UI experiences, digging through menus within menus within menus, and "cozy" games that inspire annoyance, frustration, and finally fury, then you're going to LOVE this game. Such a fun idea. Such a frustrating disappointment,

i got stressed out immediately lol. i like games like the old rollercoaster tycoon but this gives you too many pop ups too quickly. i would say the ui is unintuitive. i had to look online to just figure out how to feed my animals. too many menus inside of menus