Overall Let’s Build a Zoo is a great refresh of the park building genre. It allows you the freedom to make whatever type of zoo you want, in a way that feels fun yet not overwhelming. The designs are adorable, the music is catchy and sweet, the gameplay is beautifully smooth, and it’s challenging enough — but still relaxing and highly addictive.
Create over 300,000 hybrid animals, make moral choices, and run and design your own zoo all in one game. A best-of-best-worlds mix of creativity and business management, Let’s Build a Zoo provides a lot to do, a ton of people to meet, and a crazy number of animals to adopt/splice.
Bought this game with low expectations and damn, its soooo much fun. Its way more in depth than i thought, kudos to the devs, buy this game guys if you like this sort of game.
While largely positive, I do have some mixed feelings about this game. It's a beautifully designed game that kept me engaged for a 100 hours, and I loved all the animal and decoration sprites, the game's subtle sense of humour, and most of the gameplay. But the game is lacking in some ways. It really needed a more elaborate tutorial, for one. The smallness of the sprites were a serious eye strain. When I was trying to look at my animals in my breeding centers, or trying to decide which animals to sell to the black market dealer, I struggled so much to tell those miniscule sprites apart, especially when the breed's variants were barely different. And the frustrating thing is that it didn't have to be like that — they could have made them bigger in those menus. The sprites do appear bigger at other times, like when a birth is announced. I literally got headaches playing this game. The skill tree design was another sore point for me — it's chaotic and difficult to use. And the nail in the coffin came when my game stopped saving. I would play a whole day and then the game simply wouldn't save, just get stuck at my zoo's closing time while my workers endlessly and aimlessly wandered around. So I couldn't continue playing with my zoo that I had just sunk a 100 hours into, and couldn't finish my objectives. I think I will return to this title at some point in the future, when I forget about my grievances, because I did have a lot of fun.
There is a lot to love about Let’s Build a Zoo. Players can get stuck into the minute details of managing their own zoo or they can take a more relaxed approach to building an animal empire, but the amount of freedom is really what makes this game stand out among other management sims on the market. The sheer variety of animals on offer and the charming visuals make up for the monotonous music and sparse tutorials. This is a solid choice for players who are looking for something fun to play at a bargain price.
Overall, Let's Build a Zoo is an in-depth and delightful tycoon management sim. Its mechanics are detailed, going above and beyond to create an enjoyable experience. Players will get lost in decorating their habitats, and revel in the difficult choices that shape their zoos. There is no denying the love and dedication put into crafting the game, and it is a true treat to play.
Let's Build a Zoo does not a bring a revolution to the building/management genre but it does its job in a competent, fun way. It's always amusing to try out combining different species, and with its colourful visual world and engaging mechanics, fans of the genre will have plenty to look forward to. Those less versed will find it more difficult, especially with the game's lack of tutorials or more in-game explanations.
It feels overwhelming and too complex to play for a few quiet hours, and some of the features and choices are a bit odd. There are some cute animals and even dinosaurs are available with the DLC.
Let’s Build a Zoo reminds us why tycoon games were once an industry monolith, but also why the genre couldn’t stay at the top forever. Morality mechanics, plenty of animals, and an appealing visual style all make this Zoo one you want to visit, but some tired systems and a slightly clunky Switch control scheme means you might not stick around for more than a few breeding seasons.
Seems great, but the “big” font size is WAYYY too small in handheld, which is how I play games. Wait for a size update or you’ll hurt your eyes trying to read everything.
For the developer: I don’t care if I have to scroll text more to fit it all on screen, we need much larger text options. I’m only in my early 30’s and never have problems reading tiny writing, but this hurts.
Overwhelming. I'm a full grown adult and nothing about this cute game felt intuitive enough. I was just having a hard time keeping track of all the different systems and combined with the simplistic graphics, i couldn't.
The art style and graphics are amazing but have a huge draw back of being hard to read, hard to see even when playing docked. When the park starts getting more full is when things get harder and harder to distinguish and keep track of because the art just sorta meshes too much together.
It feels really fast paced with the day to day too. There is a pause mechanic of course but to see if things work or not you get a small window of opportunity to make corrections and with all the systems running it just sorta made me feel incredibly anxious.
This is not a relaxing game at all and not for those who may get even a small amount of anxiety because this will bring it out.
The lack of intuitive systems also makes this really not a pick up and play game. You absolutely can not step away for a few days and just pick this up for a fun time. It requires a lot of memorizing of the important systems and playing a minimum of a few hours to work through particular goals.
Anyone with even a small amount of ADD might find this to be a struggle. I found it to be too much to handle and avoid this game like the plague now.
Its very in depth game that may work for some people, but to me, it felt like a job that I should be getting paid to manage this much stuff that is hard to see. At certain points the pacing also just feels off. Its a weird combination of too much waiting and micromanaging a mess in between a lot of waiting and hoping your waiting pays off and results in profit.
Ugh.
SummaryIt's time to build a zoo! Let out your wild side, and create your own animal empire with this cute, expansive management sim. Import and breed rare creatures, hire the right staff, keep your visitors happy, and deal with plenty of weird and wonderful events. Then try your hand at DNA Splicing, and stitch together over 300,000 different t...