Home Gaming Planet Zoo: Interview With Developers As The Southeast Asia Animal Pack & Update 1.5 Are Released Today!

Planet Zoo: Interview With Developers As The Southeast Asia Animal Pack & Update 1.5 Are Released Today!

by Dave Elliott

Today sees ‘Planet Zoo’ add to its animal magic, as Frontier Developments announce the Southeast Asia Animal Pack and Update 1.5 are both now released. To celebrate the launch of this latest DLC, we had the chance to put some developers.

For those of you that have yet to pick up the game, ‘Planet Zoo’ is a management sim from the developers of ‘Planet Coaster’ and ‘Zoo Tycoon’ which lets you build and run your own zoo! You can play through a bunch of pre-made scenarios, or start your own franchise from scratch, populating it will a huge array of animals, from tiny frogs to lion cubs to mighty elephants and everything in between.

The new ‘Southeast Asia Animal Pack’ features the most additions in Planet Zoo to date, all of them native to the majestic continent of Southeast Asia. The new animals include the clouded leopard, sun bear, proboscis monkey, Ussuri dhole, Malayan tapir, North Sulawesi babirusa, binturong, and giant leaf insect. To get a bit more info about the new additions, we posed some questions to game designers Kilian Schmitt and Darren Williams.

What made you decide to go with Southeast Asia animals in the new DLC?

Kilian: The Southeast Asia region is home to a wide array of unique species so it was a great fit for our first animal-focused pack. We chose our animals to strike a wide mix of popular and unique animals that cover the diversity of this region. Of course, we all have favourites that we want to see in the game, so if we’re tied for a selection community feedback is always super helpful to help us make our choices.

Clouded Leopard

We know this pack will feature habitat animals and an exhibit animal. Can you reveal any more?

Kilian: The Southeast Asia animal pack is our first animal-focused pack, giving players access to some of the most-requested animals. In addition, the pack launches alongside free update 1.5, which will add the highly requested billboard feature to allow custom images in zoos, water customisation which allows you to control the colour and transparency of bodies of water in zoos, 80 new unlockable statues which can be obtained through playing career and timed scenarios and many other improvements.

Each new DLC tends to bring with it some additional new props. Will that be the case with the Southeast Asia DLC?

Kilian: We knew our players have wanted to see a more animal-centric pack, so with the Southeast Asia Animal Pack our focus has been on creating the 7 exciting habitat animals and 1 unique exhibit animal. There are no scenery assets included in the pack other than beautiful animal signs of our new species to decorate their habitats with. This is of course not the end of scenery items, just a new type of pack.

Would you ever consider adding a pure prop DLC focused on adding more things for players to build with rather than the animals themselves?

Kilian: Animals are the stars of our game and currently we want to focus our attention on the many species that both we and our players want to see thriving in Planet Zoo.

Syrrael’s Atlantis Zoo

You only have to look around the workshop to see some insane things people have managed to build in Planet Zoo. Do you have any particular favourites which have blown you away?

Kilian: Personally I love Syrrael’s Atlantis Zoo – the amount of detail is breathtaking and I’m really grateful to see such dedication from our Planet Zoo community.

Darren: One of the most impressive zoos I have seen on the Steam Workshop was the Miniature Festive Village from PlasticSwans and Mrs TraRex. The zoo is framed as a tabletop miniature zoo which is fully functioning with a giant house interior built around it. You have to see it to truly understand the scale of it all!

Miniature Festive Village from PlasticSwans and Mrs TraRex

Fans of the game often mention things they would like to see, so I wondered if you could give some indication of what you thought about future additions such as hotels for guests, aviaries or petting zoos?

We’re always looking for new inspiration, but currently, we’re focused on bringing the fantastic animals of Southeast Asia to Planet Zoo.

What’s your favourite animal in-game?

Kilian: The Clouded leopard and Proboscis monkey currently tie at first place for me. Cats are amazing animals in general, and the monkey’s wicked nose is currently my favourite weird thing in nature.

Proboscis monkey

Proboscis monkey

What’s your favourite animal you haven’t managed to implement in-game yet?

Darren: I am a huge fan of sugar gliders and would love to see them in-game.

Kilian: Porcupines are pretty neat, and would be a fun challenge from a character and animation perspective.

‘Planet Zoo: Southeast Asia Animal Pack’ is available on PC right now via Steam for a suggested retail price of £7.99 / $9.99 / €9.99. Please note the Planet Zoo: Southeast Asia Animal Pack requires the Planet Zoo base game in order to download and play. In addition, you can find more information about the free Update 1.5 here.

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