Planet Zoo: Casualia Park - Chapter 3

Howdy there, good people!

Welcome back again to Casualia Parks!

..... where we finally remembered to put up a nice entrance sign!

So! We've got a busy chapter ahead of us, and it's not all about management, this time! There's animals! Many of them!😉

To start off chapter 3, the first thing we did was design a new habitat in preparation for some new arrivals:

As you can see, the elevated viewing platform now has a good view of both the wombats and this new habitat, and there's also a path leading down, curving around the habitat and preparing us for future expansions.

But for the time being, we got in our first new animals!

See, we wanted some big cats. And well, lions would be too obvious. As would tigers. We were thinking of a rather more underrepresented cat. We decided to go for....

Cheetahs! Speed cats! And look at this lovely habitat they've g...

Oh. Right. Well, we better get to work.

Just so you know: The reason we put in the animals first and then design the habitat around them -after- the fact is that this way, you can easily select the animals and see exactly what they need, directly filter vegetation and enrichment items by species and so on. It's a more convenient and efficient way of doing things, even if it means that for their first few moments in your zoo, your animals will find themselves in a completely inappropriate empty meadow.

Anyhow, we got on designing!

First, we gave them some fitting vegetation and more varied ground soil, as well as a small pond to drink from.

Then we designed a nice rock-cave for them to take shelter from both the elements and the guest's eyes.

A tree-bark rubbing pad. Look at that face of utter satisfaction!

They even have..... a cardboard box. It's simple, but they do seem to enjoy batting it around from time to time.

Also quite important: We got our veterinarians researching the cheetahs, so we can take better care of them, provide better food, educate our guests more thoroughly on the animals and indeed, unlock some fun facts to read about them.😉

Speaking of educating guests, we also designed this little educational speaker stand. We put some infoboards around the place as well, so hopefully the guests will have plenty of opportunity to learn alongside our vets!

So, overall, that should make for some happy cats!

Oh, and by the way, if you aren't aware of the noises cheetahs make, check this out to see the ambience they've added to our park:

.... yes indeed. They sound just as ferocious in the game, too.😜

But! Moving away from the cheetahs for a bit, something happened with the wombats while we were busy setting up the new habitat!

Remember last time, when we mentioned that Lilardia, our baby Wombat, will eventually grow up and will need to leave the habitat? Well, here she is now:

She's all grown up and, if you can make it out in the picture, she's been marked as an "outsider" due to maturation.

Basically, different animal species deal differently with growing up. In herd animals for example, it tends to be the case that the young will stick with the herd even after maturing, because strength in numbers and whatnot.

But then, not every animal likes running with a herd. A small group perhaps, but eventually, if those social groups get big enough, newcomers aren't welcome anymore, and young animals that grow up are expected to go and find another group to join, or form their own.

Wombats are pretty much a solitary species. They don't mind being around each other too much, especially males and females, but the young are very much expected to move on once they mature, which is what's happened here.

Now, in the wild, Lilardia would strike out on her own and find herself another place to call home, but well, she's in a zoo. So for the time being, we took her out of the habitat and are keeping her in the animal trade centre. Basically the game's animal storage, where she's frozen in time.

We might release her into the wild at some point, though if and when her parents eventually pass on, there's also the idea that she could "inherit" the wombat habitat along with a new mate we could adopt from a different zoo.

But say, speaking of young animals...

.... huh. Well that didn't take long.

Turns out cheetahs really -are- quite fast. 😜

We'll just address this right now: Planet Zoo is great, but it must be said that at it's heart, even in the franchise mode, it's more of a creative sandbox rather than a challenging video game. For one, even though our small little park is set to hard difficulty, money is barely an issue anymore. It's coming in at a rate of knots.

And indeed, if you take decent care of your animals, they'll be very satisfied and comfortable, and you'll have plenty of breeding going on, meaning that as our zoo grows, we probably won't inform you of every birth (or even death) that happens. A couple of chapters down the line, this series would just turn into a pretty bland list of additions and subtractions.

That's also why we don't often mention animals by their names, because time moves fairly quickly in this game, and the individual animals in a habitat will tend to rotate in and out fairly fast.

That goes double and triple for animals that live in exhibits (those terrarium boxes), by the way. Those actually often multiply like mad, to the point where exhibits actually have an automatic population control feature.

 The Giant Forest Scorpions for example have actually been very active, and as a result we've got a whole bunch of 'em in the trade centre by now.

Though, with all that said, having the first birth of a new species is a bit of an event, so hey, first baby cheetah!😀

And before we move on from births, young animals and whatnot, we'll just mention this here: Soon after we took Lilardia out of her parent's house, as it were, they went and did it again:

See what we mean? Already there's a new baby wombat! So our thinking is: Since Lilardia is not only the first wombat, but indeed the very first animal born in our park, she'll inherit the exhibit from her parents, while her little sibling here (And any potential future siblings) will eventually be released into the wild.

..... which i'm sure will be thrilling news for Australian farmers.😜

But yes, it's time for the big project. Because the cheetah habitat is cool and nice, but we're about to implement a plan that's been bumping around our head for a while.

See, in Planet Zoo, there's a system called "interspecies enrichment". Basically, certain animal species can not only be kept in the same habitat, but will actually feel more comfortable with certain other species around.

Now, remember our family of anteaters?

Well, it just so happens that they're part of a group of multiple animal species that all get along very nicely with one another.

That's also why we named the anteater habitat the "South America Exhibit". We've been planning to do something with this system all along! And the first step:

Huge expansion to the habitat. The mossy rock-cave shelter is still functional as such, but it's now also a thoroughfare from one side of the enclosure to the other.

Then, we created a bit of a jungle in there, with some dense vegetation. All quite appropriate for a south American rainforest:

Also a nice pond, for swimming and/or drinking. Complete with rubber ducky (Which is of course a toy for the animals):

In the process of setting this up, we also extended a path around this whole thing, and connected both of the new areas of this chapter to the zoo entrance:

So, that'll all be great for the anteaters of course, but who else is this for, you might ask? Well, let us introduce:

*drumroll*

The capybara! Known for being the most chill and unbothered animal on the planet!

And!

*more drum rolling*

Baird's Tapir! Known for their weird, wiggly snouts and being (somewhat surprisingly) the biggest land mammal in  both central and south america! (They're about deer size.)

These two, along with the giant anteater, are in a group where they all benefit from having each other in the same habitat, so everyone's much happier for it. And it just makes for a very interesting and lively habitat!

Also, both the capybara and the tapirs quite like swimming, which is why we actually made the pond fairly deep. It allows for diving, and also creates space for a fancy underwater feeder!

We got two female and two male capys, and as it just so happens, both of the males are albinos. There literally weren't any other males available for adoption in the trade centre at the time, so that's just how things shook out.

 Unfortunately, we quickly ran into a bit of trouble with the tapirs. See, as it turns out, they're relatively shy animals, and having people gawking down at them from an elevated walkway all the time was proving to stress them out quite a bit.

And we mean it -really- stressed them out. They basically got panic attacks. We even had protesters in the park!

Not to worry though, we addressed the situation quite quickly.

First, we dug them a new cave shelter, just to give them another place to go when they need some privacy.

And the second thing we did was this:

We put a number of do-not-disturb signs on the upper walkway. To be frank, we thought those were mere scenery objects with no actual function, but nope, as it turns out they actually work! 

We do still get the occasional guest who's a bit too loud and makes a tapir somewhat antsy, but all in all, things are much more quiet and stress-free, now.

So, things were going well overall, with the new animals were settling in nicely in their habitats and the guests thrilled at the new exhibits!

..... and yes, because we got them everything they need, the capybaras immediately started creating a herd.

No restraint at all, we tell you!😜

The tapirs already had offspring, too. And of course, the vets are busy doing their research on all the new arrivals, so we'll get better and better at taking care of them.

In the meantime though, there's one more minor project that we wanted to get going in this chapter. And it's this:

Those new pathways around the current edges of the zoo. They look incredibly barren and featureless, which is something we set about to fixing!

Putting down various rocks, trees and lots of nettles. Funnily enough, it's almost like designing a habitat for our guests, laying out the guest areas with local flora to make everything look and feel right.

Now, that little idea grew a bit, and we decided to create a small.... rest stop? Visitor centre? Gathering place? Landmark?

Well, a little place nearby the cheetahs, where guests can eat, drink, visit the loo and have a break, in any case.

And yes, the eagle-eyed among you will already have spotted it: This little build contains an exhibit, and that means another small new animal-addition to the park!

We present to you:

The diamondback terrapin!

Terrapins are actually sort of the bridge between turtles, which are almost purely aquatic, and tortoises, the ones with legs that don't really bother much with water.

Terrapins are proper amphibians. They're happy on land, but they wanna be near the water, which is why their exhibit is basically an aquarium with an island in it.

However, there was a small hitch with this build, as it turned out. You see, we didn't actually have power in the area!

In Planet Zoo, electrical power and water purification (for lakes/ponds) work based on utility buildings, which have a service radius around them. Our little visitor area was just outside of the existing coverage, so we built a little wind turbine!

Our mechanics have been busy doing research behind the scenes just like the vets, you see. And this is one of the things they unlocked. It's neat, but looks a bit industrial.

Anytime you place a staff facility or utility like this in Planet Zoo, it actually has a radius around it where it negatively impacts guest happiness. You make the radius smaller by dressing things up with scenery objects, plants, et cetera.

As you can see in the picture though, we put it off the guest path a bit, with a staff-only path connecting to it. So that wasn't technically necessary in this case.

However, the guests aren't the only ones who want stuff to look nice in our park, so....

..... we prettied it up a bit.😉

Actually, looking at those pictures, we realized a bit of something:

When we're doing that kind of beautification stuff, we should really make use of Planet Zoo's terrain tools, particularly the ground texture painter. This would look way nicer if it wasn't just surrounded by neatly trimmed grass. Some disturbed ground and soil might look good. Something to consider for future chapters.🙂

Still, it's a lot nicer than it used to be. And speaking of builds turning out nicely, the little visitor area we set up turned out pretty well too, we'd say!

So now, our guests have a rest stop on the way past the cheetah habitat, which suggests to us that that'll be where we go in the next chapter.

As the park grows, there will doubtlessly be management challenges and other interesting things to deal with, but expansions, or at least major overhauls of areas, should realistically happen every chapter.🙂

But for now, that wraps up what we've been up to, and where things currently stand in Casualia Park Europe.

But! There -is- one more thing of interest! Last chapter, we did this little fly-through video of the park:

Well, we're not necessarily doing one of those every chapter, but we had a bit of an idea. You see, Planet Zoo is quite well integrated into the Steam Workshop.

Soooo we're gonna be doing some stuff with that!

For starters, you can visit our Planet Zoo-related workshop page, where we'll upload blueprints for the various buildings and structures you'll see in this series! (And a few older ones that are already on there.😉)

But going a bit further than that, check this out!

That's right, it's the whole park. Each time we release a chapter, we'll upload a kind of 'snapshot' of our progress. That way, you can download it and have a look around!

Or rearrange everything you don't like!

Or delete all the barriers, release the cheetahs and generally tear the place up!😜

Though, this does come with a disclaimer: Planet Zoo has a million little DLC packs. They all add new animals, and some add various bits and bobs of scenery as well. Now, we didn't really discriminate which scenery we're using while building Casualia Park, which means that unless you own all the DLC we own (listed on the page), your mileage may vary. Just letting 'ya know.

But for now, that'll be it for this chapter.

We've got new animals, we've got an expanded park layout, and we've got some plans for further expansion. So, if you please, join us soon for chapter 4, and see what we come up with!😉

P.S. Michael here. I just did the final proofreading pass for this post, and it's the 7th of January. So happy birthday, Amalia!😄