DLC Impressions are reviews for DLC content.
Planet Zoo keeps on growing with the Africa Pack, a collection of brand new animals and various building pieces, all themed around the African biome and its cultural style.
The Africa Pack comes with Meerkats, Southern White Rhinos, Fennec Foxes, Scarab Beetles and African penguins. These are all very popular animals, which make them a very welcome addition to the Planet Zoo roster.
The first thing I usually look out for with the game’s animal additions are their behaviours, and like many other virtual zookeepers, I love following them around to see what sort of care the developers have given them.
Thankfully, there were quite a few interesting quirks and behaviours I noticed from the new animals:
- Fennec Foxes are absolutely adorable with how they interact with their new enrichment item, excitedly playing with it!
- Meerkats not only have their iconic standing poses, but they also dig through the ground, burying themselves in one place, and digging themselves out another. It is a very unique behaviour that gives a lot of life to them!
- Scarab Beetles can play around with the dung ball, oftentimes clumsily falling on their head when they push it too far.
The new animals come with their own lifestyle and social habits, which have to be taken care of in order to improve their welfare. For those who are unaware, Planet Zoo is not only a fun management game, but also a trove of knowledge that encourages the wellbeing of different animals. In fact, there are virtual protestors that will boycott your zoo if you don’t take good care of them.
There are two major fanbases for Planet Zoo, each liking an aspect of the game based on their interests. We have people who love taking care of animals and observing them, and those that can build impressive structures out of the modular pieces available in-game. Frontier’s tech for their Planet series is extremely impressive, and players have built mind-blowing structures inspired by real life attractions. To further fuel their creativity, the Africa Pack comes with over 150 items that players can use to build or decorate their African themed parks.
The majority of these pieces come with stunning African patterns that can be further modified with customisable colours, allowing players to build creative and varied structures. A handful of wall emblems and statues are also included, giving more options to decorators. My favourite additions, however, are the foliage pieces.
Builders can play around with a bunch of iconic foliages, such as African Oil Palms, Quiver Trees and Doun Palms that help add authenticity to certain habitats. Not only do these fit well with the new animals, but also complement others from the African biome made available in the standard edition.
The pack also comes with a brand new challenge zoo where you can jump in and start seeing a lot of the animals and structures in action. It is a timed mode where getting the best rating is reliant on you beating different time limits. The goal like the majority is simple, make the zoo profitable!
I do wish, however, that we got to see more species of the crocodile, like perhaps the Nile Crocodile which could have been a good addition to the Africa Pack. Most fans like me were quite excited when Frontier added 8 new animals to the Southeast Asia Pack, with most hoping that it’d set the precedent for future packs. Sadly, that does not seem to be the case so far, as this DLC goes back to the 5 animals per DLC formula.
Overall, the DLC comes with interesting content for both builders and caretakers that can help evolve the design and layout of your zoo. There are interesting quirks given to the animals in this pack, which makes observing them quite fun, and a huge number of stunningly patterned structures that can bring new life to your franchise.
The Africa Pack is now available on Steam for £7.99/$9.99 and for a limited time, you can get the base game for only £15.74/$20.24 as part of Steam’s Summer Sale.
As We Play 