Update at 2PM – The Planet Zoo 2 announcement will drop tomorrow, Thursday 28th May at 2PM UK time, as a ’24 hour countdown to announce’ has now appeared on the game’s YouTube channel.
The video is running for 24 hours, with some nice ambient music and currently showing some kind of structure which is in a bit of disrepair. For one thing, it says “ZO” above the wooden structure, and there’s upended crates, buckets, ladders and more around the scene. This will surely get fixed up over time, so will be nice to pop into for a bit of ambience, and there’s some kind of moving light casting shadows every now and then.
The original story follows:
An announcement for Planet Zoo 2 looks to be pretty close, as branding for the zoo keeping sequel has appeared across the game’s YouTube channel.
There’s no hint of when the announcement will take place, with no placeholder videos or livestreams found within the channel’s sections, but with the PZ2 branding having already been uploaded, you’d expect it to be imminent. We will keep our eyes peeled for more info.
The popular zoo management game celebrated its sixth anniversary at the end of last year, having originally launched for PC in late 2019 before a console port arrived in 2024.
Frontier’s many-fronted approach to the management sim has been juggling Planet Coaster, Planet Zoo, Jurassic World Evolution and (previously) F1 Manager for the past decade. In many ways, Planet Coaster and Planet Zoo were seen as definitive entries in their particular segments, which saw Frontier get a lot of flak with Planet Coaster 2 a couple years ago. Planet Coaster 2 was good, but not viewed by the community as a particularly significant step forward on the original. Hopefully Planet Zoo 2 can avoid similar issues, though there’s more in common with between a zoo and a dinosaur park, and we loved Jurassic World Evolution 3 last year.
Looking back on the original game, Dom said in our Planet Zoo review, “Planet Zoo is simply wonderful; a bright and breezy park builder that gushes with enthusiasm for its charges. There’s depth to spare here, pushing further than either of Frontier’s most recent management games have, and it leans into its own identity, with a keen eye for the importance of education, animal welfare and preservation.”
