I'll be very surprised if we don't see...

...jaguars and polar bears. According to my research, they have appeared in the base game of every single major zoo simulation game to date. Additionally, black bears, cougars, flamingos, giant pandas, gorillas, kangaroos, leopards, and penguins have each featured in at least five separate base games. I'd say this makes them part of the "standard set" of zoo animals, so they top my list of animals most likely to be announced for the full release.
 
Last edited:
I - for my part - wouldn't be surprised. And also not disappointed. The games mentioned appeared at a time when DLC wasn't as common as it is today. Today's games don't have to fulfill the claim of completeness anymore. If there is no polar bear, I can "legitimately" count on an add-on with (more) animals from the polar region (arctic fox, reindeer, etc.) and if the kangaroo is missing, also on koalas, wombats, emus, etc. in an Australian DLC.
The only species I personally expect in the basic game is a gorilla. All the others would be a welcome encore.
 
I’d really love to see all those animals you mentioned, whether that be in the game now or a DLC. I just want them to appear at some point!
 
They're probably planning on doing themed DLC packs in the future, like an Australian pack, an arctic pack, a South American pack, etc.
I'd love if jaguars, polar bears and giant pandas made it into the base game, though. (I think people would be disappointed if there were no giant pandas, in particular.) I'd want all three of those, personally.
 
That's beautiful research, I give you all the upvotes.
I take it you excluded animals that only appeared in 2 or 1 games?
Correct, and thank you. The list of 1- and 2-game outlier animals was immense. Also requiring three or more games meant that every animal was represented in at least two separate game series.

It was fun to compare the different games, and the data show some interesting trends. Notice that the only seven animals to appear in all base games are the record holders: the heaviest (elephant) and tallest (giraffe) land animals, the heaviest predator overall (polar bear), and the heaviest predator from each major continent (lion = Africa, tiger = Asia, grizzly bear = NA, jaguar = SA).
 
Just as a quick update for your spreadsheet, peafowl weren't in Zoo Tycoon 1. There was a user-created unofficial downloadable version but not an official one (and by that standard, literally every animal was in ZT1).
 
I think that to raise awareness of what is happening with global warming and unfortunately with the fires in the Amazon, those 2 species you name, and I don't know if any more of those places, will be in the game.
I still don't know if in the original game or in some kind of DLC´s in the future
 
Revisiting this spreadsheet after the announcement of the South America Pack today. I, like many, am somewhat disappointed that the DLCs don't contain more animals. However, I appreciate that Frontier paid attention and didn't skip any of the SA species that have appeared most frequently in other zoo games. Plus the choices represent a good distribution of taxonomy and geography, specifically the largest carnivore (jaguar), largest ungulate (llama), and largest insectivore (anteater) on the continent

It is nonetheless disappointing that we will now never see any representatives of the sloths, armadillos, or caviid rodents (capybaras/guinea pigs) in Planet Zoo.
 
It is nonetheless disappointing that we will now never see any representatives of the sloths, armadillos, or caviid rodents (capybaras/guinea pigs) in Planet Zoo.

Why are people being so melodramatic? We can't possibly know what they have in store for us in the future.

Looking at the DLC for PlanCo and JWE, there's a good chance we'll get smaller packs with just animals in them to cover some of the things that were missed. We could see a "Rodent Pack", or a "Monkey Pack", or anything really. We don't know. Especially with the feedback coming from people around a DLC that hasn't even been officially released yet - I'm sure Frontier is looking at it and already considering how to do it differently next time.

Given time constraints making the packs bigger likely isn't possible, otherwise they'll have to wait too long between releases to give us new content. They might be able to rearrange the way they create DLC though, in order to give us more animals and less scenery next time, or they might do some packs with only scenery in them to fulfil that need later. Saying "never" is just silly.
 
Why do you think there will never be any more South American species?
How many DLCs do we realistically expect for this game? 6-8? Let's assume the bioregion trend continues like the park themes did for PlanCo. An Australia Pack is all but guaranteed. After that, there are plenty of other regions that could be addressed. If they run out of bioregions they may turn to either biomes or taxonomic groups. In either case we might get individual SA species tagged in, but there will not be a full-scale return to South America. The best hope I could see would be Central America Pack that doubles up on some of the crossover species.
 
Back
Top Bottom