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Planet Zoo 2 is the follow-up to 2019's Planet Zoo, Frontier's zoo management sim that's kept a dedicated building community going ever since. I got a couple of hours with a dev build during a remote preview session, covering both the campaign and sandbox modes. A couple of hours is obviously not enough time to judge the full game, but it was more than enough to see where Frontier is taking a series already known for its depth, attention to detail, and the freedom it gives players to build elaborate zoos, and I'm very excited about it.
Frontier hasn't tried to reinvent how the game plays. The core loop is still what you'd expect: build habitats, keep your animals happy, keep your guests happy, keep the zoo making money. What's changed is everything around that loop, quality-of-life fixes, new management systems, a conservation layer built around wildlife reserves, and two new habitat types the community has wanted for years.
The big additions
The preview didn't even start in a zoo. It started in one of those wildlife reserves, where I got to drive a car through the environment Jurassic World-style, taking photos of animals roaming freely before I'd built a single thing. However, as shown later in the preview, players will get complete freedom to design these reserves however they want.
From there, I moved into the campaign's first zoo. Campaign mode was never really my thing in the original Planet Zoo, I brushed past it fairly early and spent most of my time in sandbox instead. That said, Planet Zoo 2's campaign zoos are more detailed and more alive than I remember the original's being, and the opening hours go almost straight into the two biggest additions: aviaries and aquariums.
Neither feels bolted on. They feel like the existing habitat system, just expanded. The aviary roof system is the best example of that. You place a barrier just as you would with a normal habitat, drop support poles wherever you want them, and the game generates a roof to fill the gaps around them. It already opens up a lot more freedom in how habitats look, and there's a solid range of base-game birds ready to populate them.
Aquariums get the same level of attention. Staff actually enter them through an animated airlock sequence, complete with wetsuits and breathing apparatus, when they need to feed or clean. Animals are also divided into two categories: hero animals, which have individual welfare needs just like land animals, and shoals, groups of fish handled collectively rather than individually. This is probably the feature I'm most excited about, I can already picture building an aquarium-only zoo, or one built entirely around birds.
Building and management
If you've spent any amount of time building in Planet Zoo, you'll probably agree that small quality-of-life changes can sometimes matter more than a shiny new feature. Pathing has picked up some useful additions of its own. A circular stamp tool for laying down round plaza areas in one go rather than building them piece by piece, and paths that can finally be coloured, which sounds minor until you think about how much time players put into the details of their zoos.
The change I'm perhaps most excited about, though, is one I didn't even notice during the preview. Planet Zoo 2 has borrowed the ability to freely resize scenery pieces from Frontier's recent work on Jurassic World, rather than locking players to fixed sizes like the first game did. My brain was still wired for how the first game works, so I missed it entirely while playing. It only clicked when I saw footage elsewhere afterward, and now that it has, I think it's going to change how people build more than anything else in this game.
There's also a new management layer to consider. Guest satisfaction has been expanded beyond what was available in the first game, with dietary requirements now playing a role. Guests and staff haven't been rebuilt from scratch, though, Frontier is still using the same character base from Planet Zoo.
A much better-looking zoo
Visually, Planet Zoo 2 looks considerably better than the original. The lighting in particular has seen a major improvement, and I spent a good amount of time simply watching light move across an animal's fur and scales during the preview, which makes the whole game feel a lot more natural.
Animal detail is excellent too, and the improved behaviour helps sell it. The animals themselves look amazing, the fur modelling in particular is a big step up, and the animations feel a lot more lifelike than anything in the first game. Animals are also no longer tied to specific enrichment items, they'll scratch and rub against trees, rocks, whatever you've placed, instead of needing a dedicated object for it.
The rest of my session was sandbox time, mostly poking around at pathing, the new terrain tools and the scenery catalogue rather than building anything ambitious. I've been excited for Planet Zoo 2 for a long time, and this preview didn't just meet that.
From what I've seen so far, Planet Zoo 2 is shaping up to be my GTA 6.
Planet Zoo 2 launches on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X on October 13, 2026, with a physical console edition following on October 28.
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