Recently, it dawned on me that my only publicly known Planet Zoo projects are those found on this blog, which is currently limited to Monkey Land, Wild Americas and a standalone blue penguin habitat. I feel this does me a little disservice because, as happy as I am with those builds, I feel like my skills have developed a lot since then. It might also suggest I haven't been working on anything since and that couldn't be any further from the truth!
Rather than keep things private until I complete a zoo, which is what my policy used to be, I'm now going to show more regular updates of my ongoing projects.
There's currently four projects that I consider "active" as I've worked on them in the past 12 months:
- Crow Nest Park Zoo (2021)
- Cranbrook Wildlife Park (2022)
- Ponderosa Zoo (2023)
- Sitlington Animal Park (2024)
Here's some brief information on what these projects are, with screenshots and more details to follow in future posts.
Crow Nest Park Zoo
Based in England, this project involves the conversion of my real-life hometown's public park into a large zoo. I managed to get the layout surprisingly close to its real-life counterpart and I borrowed many of its buildings and landmarks for use as guest facilities and exhibits. The lake with a duck island is now a lake with a siamang island, the playing fields are now home to an African savannah, the greenhouse is now a crocodile house, the old bandstand is now a penguin exhibit, and so on. The lore behind it is that it was once bought from the local council and used to house someone's private collection. That "someone" is naturally me, the CEO of Apex Zoos, a company which builds and operates zoos worldwide. The collection is mostly focused on animals I personally find most interesting: great apes, big cats, crocodilians, large African animals, bears and much more. I started working on it in 2021, long before Wild Americas, and because of this, a large chunk of it feels very outdated compared to my current standard. In the past 12 months, I've been gradually updating it but it's a very long process. I'll be sharing more details on this zoo and some screenshots in my next post.
Cranbrook Wildlife Park
In 2022, I had the pleasure of visiting the Canadian Rockies and I was inspired to build something in that stunning part of the world. The zoo focuses exclusively on Canadian wildlife, both native and invasive. It is built around a large lake, with one half of the zoo heavily wooded and the other more open plain. I've built around 10-15% of this zoo but progress stalled a while ago when I started working on my other zoos and I haven't been back since. To this day, it remains some of my best work and that will definitely motivate me to jump back into it and complete it one day.
Ponderosa Zoo
Crow Nest Park Zoo gave me a little taste of what it's like to recreate something from real-life in Planet Zoo. It was a refreshing experience as I usually just build things of my own imagination/loosely-inspired by real-life. I wanted to take things to the next level and recreate a zoo in its entirety. I chose Ponderosa Zoo because it's a zoo which is very close to my heart, being my local zoo and one I've been visiting since childhood. I also chose it due to its small size (meaning I can build it much quicker) and the fact it's local, so I can visit it whenever I need references. I've built around 40% of the zoo so far and I'm very happy with the results!
Sitlington Animal Park
I've always had a soft spot for small, rural zoos/farms which have mostly domesticated animals with a smattering of exotics on the side. The release of the Barnyard Animal Pack gave me an exciting opportunity to build one of those zoos myself. Sitlington Animal Park has its origins in a farm which is slowly expanding into exotics. An example of a zoo with a similar history is Noah's Ark Zoo Farm which today boasts a 20-acre African elephant facility among numerous other large exotic exhibits. My zoo is nothing of that scale and was instead inspired by Cannon Hall Farm, a local farm which has mostly domestics, aside from a few small exotic mammals and a reptile house. Over time, I plan on developing my zoo further with more exotics.
I'll drop some screenshots and more in-depth info on each zoo in later posts, so keep an eye out for those!
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