I’ve been wanting to get into zoo-building games for a while, I remember really enjoying Zoo Tycoon on Xbox as a kid. However, it’s a lot more niche than I anticipated, and I’m wondering if you guys have any that you really like? Unfortunately, I am really limited with platform. I have a Nintendo Switch, a phone, and a Macbook, so I’d prefer if any leads could stick to those. I’ve heard Planet Zoo is really good, but I unfortunately don’t think that’s possible since it’s only for Windows, and I can’t run Windows on a M1 Macbook for any reasonable price. (I’m sure it’s good, but no game is worth 99 dollars a month). But if any of you guys have been successful with running it on a recent Macbook, let me know. I only found one very suspicious looking link for Mac downloads, but I’m also not the most tech-savy person out there. Any help is greatly appreciated, and I’d love to hear you guys’ opinions on certain games
Honestly Planet Zoo is the only zoo game I personally believe is worth playing. There's probably an okay zoo mobile game out there, but on a Mac and a Switch I think you're probably out of luck.
I have heard it is possible to run planet zoo on a Mac by streaming it via Geforce now. The paid version is far cheaper than 99 dollars monthly
Well, you can get "Let's Build A Zoo" on Switch, which has its fun moments, although it does have a LOT going on, so you'll need to balance several things at once. It may be a little overwhelming. Alternatively, also on Switch, is "Megaquarium". It's about building your own aquarium rather than a zoo, but it still has a wide variety of animal choices (from clownfish to whale sharks) and it has a campaign mode as well. It's genuinely fun.
Planet Zoo is much better than modded ZT2 in my experience and I have hundreds of hours on both. Planet Zoo is just more modern and has a richer amount of gameplay features and building opportunities, going back to ZT2 just feels archaic in comparison.
For me it's the opposite: I started with PZ and felt overwhelmed everytime I started building something, so I switched to ZT2 and modded it, I can safely say it was the best trade I've ever made, without talking about the fact that I won't have to wait for the final update to install mods as ZT2 has been out for more than 10 years and the modding community is still alive although fragmented
I also prefer Zoo Tycoon 2 to Planet Zoo. For me, Planet Zoo has so many construction and gameplay options that they give me paralysis by analysis, and it can become really overwhelming to choose what objects to use and what to build. I also feel like Planet Zoo is realistic to a fault (why do I have to have a trade center, a staff building, a veterinarian building, a water treatment plant, a zookeeper, and a vet in order to add an animal to a habitat? Why can't I just click an animal from the menu, click on the habitat, and have the animal appear??). Then, while some parts of PZ are too realistic, there are other cases where the game throws realism out the window (ie. adding snow-machines to snow leopard enclosures so that the animals will be cold enough). Zoo Tycoon 2's pathing and water systems are also WAY easier to use than the ones that Planet Zoo has.
I get where people are coming from, I took. While to make the switch over because I felt Planet Zoo's mechanics were very overwhelming and I preferred the simplicity of ZT2. But after giving a proper crack at PZ and figuring out all the mechanics and such it's basically impossible to go back and was really worth it, it really is so much better in almost every way. Basically, it takes a bit of figuring out but once you get the hang of it you have way more building opportunities and such.
Yeah, PZ has a very steep learning curve. I totally understand why a lot of people don't get into it. Sometimes I do play ZT2 from time to time because I want a simpler experience. But overall I'm about PZ!
