Beta Feedback

[Stormblind]

So, it was largely a positive experience. However, the following were things that I personally found a bit counter intuitive / not as great.

Black Market Trader - I got the task, but was unable to afford it when offered. I spent a good 5-10 minutes trying to find which button/building/etc would re-activate the option to purchase from them. Clarity here would be good.

Controls - The controls were a bit frustrating at points. Navigating into menu's was largely fine, but getting back felt clumsy. Adding the ability to right click to navigate back to the previous selections in the menu would be fantastic.

Hiring - I got the task to hire another researcher, and after 10 minutes and multiple days, I had been unable to hire one. Similar problem occurred with wardens. This could lead to a death spiral situation of being unable to feed the animals properly if you expand too much too fast.

Animal Compatibility - I couldn't find anything for information on whether animals should/shouldn't be grouped together. In theory putting bunnies and snakes into the same enclosure should be bad, but I wasn't able to find anything to find it that was a problem or not.

Besides that, it plays well, very reminiscent of the Kairosoft tycoon games.

[TinyPixxels]

Thanks for playing! I agree with all of this, we've written it all down - thanks so much for taking the time to send us feedback =]

[Absinthe]

I think it would be nice to add a button or tutorial for the tasks that require you to either build something, or similar. I had a hard time figuring out how to purchase land, for example.

[Atom]

Hi,

After playing the beta and trying all quests / features offered.

I agree with my fellow on every points detailled above and I add my comments:

- Picking an animal: after chosing an animal on the world map the game asks you to select an enclosure. But you can't cancel this action so you must select an existing pen (no back option; no Pen menu creation).

- Pixel art: I found the font used for menus / task text /... very imprecise and quite difficult to read.

- Hiring system: the logic and menus are a bit confusing, grouping all hires in the same menu and not for some in the dedicated building could be a better option

- Research: interresting way to unlock new contents.

- Map navigation: you can't move the map, with keys, once in construction menu (or I miss this?)

Finally, and I will end here, the game has a great potential. I like the building phase, the dna mix & good/bad reputation are interresing ideas, many information panels or menus are lock in beta but suggest good management aspects.

Ps: No bugs occured and performances looks good (with à basic zoo)

[Gamesjunkie]

Super cute game but I did run into a couple problems:

The indicator in the upper left kept telling me my pens needed enrichment items when they already had them. I even added a second item to the pen and it still said I had no items in there.

I was told one of my buildings needed an employee. Tracking showed me the vending machine as needing an employee which doesn't need one at all.

Having to wait on employee applicants is really frustrating. Just let us click the building and choose from available applicants and hire if we can afford it. What's the point in making us wait days?

Really wish we could expand on existing pens instead of having to build a new one and then move all the animals over. Plus then you have to buy new water and toys since it seems you can't move those to another pen.

[clip_on_tie]

The game looks promising so far! The biggest issue I have is that things aren't as intuitive as they should be, and when they're not intuitive, you don't get told how to do them. Some little animations showing how to do common tasks when they first appear would be good. I'd also like to see clicking off things closing them, as clicking the button explicitly to close them slows things down.

Main menu
* The game lets me select 3840x2160, even though that isn't a resolution my system can go to (1080p is my maximum). When selected I get a resized window (limited to the height of my screen) that's thinner than it is tall - which isn't right as it should be wider rather than taller.
* The animated Discord animation looks clunky - the top of the icon is bouncing high but the bottom barely leaves the ground.
* I'm not a fan of mixing high res art and pixel fonts on the main screen. I'd suggest one or the other, but not both.

Avatar screen
The avatar select screen doesn't let you change your mind. I didn't realise they were 3 males and 3 females until after I'd picked one, and I would've liked to have changed the one I picked. Also, there should be a visual indicator (light coloured box perhaps?) indicating which one you chose.
When typing in the name of my zoo, I get a "~" when I type "`", and a "`" when I type "~"

Enclosures
On the first task you're asked to build an enclosure
* There's no suggestion of how big it should be
* You're not told that you're making the boundaries of an enclosure. Most tycoon games you select a corner then the opposite corner. The mechanism for marking out enclosures really needs a hint box telling you what to do.
* That chain icon isn't intuitive until it's a closed chain link - I had no idea what it was. I'd suggest changing the broken chain icon - or at least describe it in the aforementioned hint animation.
* I tried to make a 2x2 grass pen. It flashed red that it was a problem, but didn't tell me what the problem was.


When asked to build a research hub, you're told to build it by the end of the day. The leaked newspaper story says there's no estimates on when it will be built which sounds wrong as you have until the end of the day to build it. It would be more accurate to say it's estimated by the end of the day but may be delayed.
I'd suggest "The zoo management staff says" should be reworded to "Zoo management says" or "The zoo staff say".
The phrase "Illustrated guide of blueprints" on the paper's page makes no sense.

The last morality bonus is showing as a white square which looks wrong.

I clicked the world view button and selected Toronto zoo who want a trade for horses. I hit "view trade" and it tells me to select an animal to view its information and trade. I clicked my rabbit in the bottom left window and I'm not seeing information on it. If this isn't the right way to do things then it shouldn't let me click the rabbit and should give an informational error. If the rabbit should be showing in the box at the top left the text should say to click the animal in that box.

Camera mode doesn't appear to do what I expected. I clicked it expecting to be able to take a picture of my zoo (save to a file, share on discord etc) and it just hides the UI. That's fine, just not what I expected.

When I choose build, the box that says "build" keeps getting redrawn each time I choose a new category. It would be better if it said the category name each time instead of just "build". If it's going to just say "build" I would suggest not reanimating it onto screen.

It wasn't obvious that things build when you place them, as there's no confirmation button. You hear a noise if you have sound on, but if you don't it's not clear that things are immediately built when placed.
When I go to place the water trough, it showed the heat map. I eventually found out that the circle was a heat map by clicking the utility heat map button and seeing it appear, but this wasn't told to me when I first went to place a trough. Also, I haven't been told how to extend that heat map out to cover the rest of the park.

It took me a while to find my tasks once I closed them. I'd like to see a tasks button in the top right corner.

There should be an option to take me back to the main menu, not just quit the game.

Why did I name my zoo? It doesn't appear to show up anywhere.

I'd already built a storeroom when the build task came up. After I closed the window where the lady told me to build one, it didn't pop up a "build storeroom task - 100% completed" window on the right like I'd expect. I eventually figured out that it was the pin task button that decides which ones show and which don't - but that's not intuitive. I'd suggest pin as the default - at least for the first level.

I would expect when clicking a task to get information about that task. e.g. I'm told I can buy an animal from the black market. I'd expect to click that task and be taken to the "buy an animal off me" page, but I just get taken to the generic task list. 1) this slows down gameplay, and 2) I've got no idea where to find the screen to buy an animal off him.

I'm being told the animals look thirsty but I've put a water trough in their pens. Not sure what I'm doing wrong. When you get asked to provide food / water for your animals, it would be nice to be told how to do it with some mini animated screenshots or something (building a pen should show something similar too.)

A lady who'd walked in about 3 seconds earlier complained that she was having a bad day and the enclosures were boring - she hadn't had time to see anything yet.

I can scroll the world map up and down which doesn't make much sense as there isn't anything up/down. It would be good if the world map showed icons for each animal being offered - maybe popping up when you hover over it?

I love that there's the bear display that guests can put their heads in.

The animals are cute, and I like that they get choppered in. The art style is great and so far the music / sound effects all work well. It'll all be a lot clearer on a second play, but handholding a bit more through the first play would be appreciated.

[minas6907]

My thoughts are much the same as what is posted above. I will say the cuteness factor is through the roof, I love this! But its is difficult to know where to go to access certain items. I took me an absolute eternity to see that you add a place for the animals to drink water by selecting the actual enclosure. It makes sense now, but I think I'm just so used to something like Roller Coaster Tycoon or Planet Zoo/Coaster where all the items are categorized in one particular menu. When I selected the enclosure, I had no idea that would bring up different items. Like I said, it makes sense, but you need to do alot of figuring out.

Something else is the black market, I'm not really sure how to access it. I have the task, but I'm not seeing how to go find black market animals. I'm not really asking you to explain this one to me, I'm sure I'll figure it out, but I seem to be clicking on the same menus over and over and getting nowhere.

A little thing thats slightly annoying is that when I have certain menus selected, I seem to lose the ability to move around with WASD. Again, its not horrible, but it is annoying. I need to press ESC a few times to get out and move around again with the keyboard.

Overall, I'm thrilled for this title. It doesnt take itself too seriously, its super adorable, and has a morbid side to it haha. Love it.

[TinyPixxels]

Thanks folks! We're listening and making lots of notes, thank you for taking the time to write out your thoughts!

[Feckyeslife]

Chiming in with some thoughts!

Likes
- Cute design
- Nice animal selection for early game, though was disappointing to see ones that needed enclosures that weren't accessible yet?
- Days seem to have good pacing to them

Constructive Feedback
- Need tooltips for menu options
- When getting animals from the Shelter, can't tell what enclosures they need
- Unclear how hiring process works when its not done automatically
- Show shortcuts for the build/rotate when building/moving objects rather than needing to scroll through the little tutorial box manually
- How to get to the research screen? Was only able to get there by selecting a greyed out option in the build menus
- Notify player if a staff member is trapped! Had a keeper trapped and wasn't able to feed animals for days because I just couldn't tell what they were doing. Turns out the decor I had moved had them stuck.
- Tech tree is complete guessing game as to what you might be unlocking nearby. Clicked on nearly everything trying to find where the 2nd researcher option might be.
- Losing WASD in some of the menus especially when trying to place items is slightly annoying
- At end of day, would be helpful to see what that's days profit and loss was rather than just overall +/- which didn't take into account any rewards from tasks.

Thank you for the BETA opportunity :)

[@AHrEJl]

To less gameplay time in beta..

[clip_on_tie]

On a second playthough :
The interface is definately way too clicky. Having to constantly find the click the close button instead of right clicking, or left clicking somewhere that is off the clickable things on the current menu makes using the interface annoying.
The interface needs to be a lot more intuitive so you know where to go to find the thing you need to do. I should be able to hire people from the main interface without having to go to the gates to hire someone for example, or see my tasks without finding the main building to click it etc.
Having to constantly go to the world map to see if there is an animal available to purchase is painful. A visual indicator of what each zoo has/is looking for is definately needed (too many clicks). Also, why is the American zoo green and the other's red? It makes no sense as other zoos have animals available for me but red suggests they don't.
The plots around the zoo need a visual indicator that they're for sale so you know that you need to click them to purchase. An additional button in a menu somewhere would also help.
Clicking into the tasks by going to the relevant building is painful.
An indicator of the ideal pen size for various sized animals as you build out a pen would be a good idea.
There's no indicator of whether you can/should co-habitate animals.
Hiring people is painful.
The pinned task (or the task list in the management office) should link to the relevant screen for the task when clicked (once I closed the exotic animal trader there was no way I could find to get back to him - I should be able to click the exotic animal task and get the page asking me to purchase one)
I was asked to paint a zebra and once I said yes, it then warned me that it would impact gameplay, but (a) didn't give any sort of indicator on how much of an impact that would be, and (b) I had no way to change my decision.
Everyone kept complaining that my animals were not entertained but there was nothing on the tech tree I could research to get entertainment for them.
The research "points" aren't described so I wasn't sure what the numbers were next to the research progress bar. A tooltip would be handy.
The tech tree should give you a way to head for a goal (e.g. if I want to enrich my animals I should see what's down the tree for enrichment, and be able to research the items on that path). The additional progress things on each research item are also not explained - I didn't know if I needed to re-research the item to increase that bar, or what it meant.
I would like to be able to edit my existing animal pens without destroying them - or if I need to destroy them, I should be able to keep any enrichment items etc I purchased for that pen and move all animals to a new pen in a single click.
Being able to move all animals in a pen of a specific type at once would be helpful.
I'd like to be able to offer my own animals up for trade to other zoos to combat overcrowding rather than waiting for them to offer me something.
Being able to get more than one type of animal at once on the world map screen would be helpful.
I have no idea why I know the full genetic genome of the rabbit population and only some knowledge of the genomes of some other animals. If those numbers just go up for each species over time once you have a genetic splicing machine then that should be explained.

Sorry that this is all negative. I like the concept of the game and the graphics are cute, but the interface needs a lot of quality of life improvements before I'd find playing it enjoyable - it's currently just a lot of hard work due to the interface.

[blueocarina]

Agree with a lot of feedback above, but my main callouts are:
- The enclosure requirements are super vague. I legitimately thought one of my enclosures was bugged until I found out about water pumps. And I still don't really understand why some enclosures with trampolines and balls didn't satisfy animal needs.
- I was also was unable to work out how to interact with the black market even after running through a couple times
- Would be nice to be able to set the speed to pause to deal with some of the more micro-management bits

[james]

Thanks for all the feedback (I am one of the developers)
1 - Black market - yes this needs work, to access it you need to click on the guy when he visits the zoo (around once a week) - we need to add an icon, and better explain the concept of "Special Visitors" who unlock new things while they are at the zoo.

2 - The messages from the people / Notifications are a bit buggy / delayed. (like people will say negative things, if at the start of the day things were in a bad state, because the message queue only clears at midnight)

3 - Pause, yes a lot of people have mentioned this, we should be able to add it pretty easily.

4 - Menu Nav - yes its too clicky, I agree, the click off to cancel is in but only for some panels (we havent finished coding it yet), escape also closes windows. Using right click, might be problematic, because that actually does things in some states of the game (rotates dureing build, drags view during a few other states)

5 - Enclosures (desert forest etc) this isnt available in the beta, in the final game you will have to discover the ideal habitats, but the impact wont be too bad of having animals in the wrong habitat, so long as you dont stick things in the arctic environment that shouldnt be there.

I could type lots more, But I mostly just wanted to call out the black market issues, for anyone that might still be trying to figure it out.

[Zhurtel]

I use ESC for closing menues and is not so bad. Thanks for blackmarket guy tip i was getting crazy :D. Unless you can upgrade the research lab seems like there is bugged quest asking for hiring for a second one. Any idea how big enclosures should be? Is animal dependant? How many fit per enclosure? Can you make bigger existing enclosures? For now i am doing this: build new one,move animal ,delete old enclosure ,move new enclosure... Also i accepted some guy to paint some horses as zebras but horses dont seem to change. I like the morality concept, and also animal variants. Not so much fan of the gen splicing for now... Is game "playable" without it? (Now youre kinda forced to do it) will i lose too much without it? or maybe i will actually like it more in the full release? Thanks for the beta! And keep up the good work!

[Jaoojjk]

-After placing the grass [animal pen], press right to undo and press left to build, I can't continue to build grass. I had to switch from grass to something else, then I can place the grass again.

- Purchasing land, when I received this task, I don't know how to do this quest. I try everything to do this mission. Even I click on the land next to it but nothing happens. Until the end of the trial period, I quit the game and kept continue to re-playing on the last day again, so when I hold the mouse on the next land, it shows I can buy new land.
P.S. I replayed it during the task buy land about 5 times, 3 out of 5 couldn't buy it until I had to left the game and back again, but the last 2 I bought it, no problem, which I don't know why I couldn't buy the land.

- Enrichment is obtained after researching. But it still gives a warning that my pen doesn't have an enrichment, even I placing 3 balls and a trampoline in the pen. I'm not sure if the type and number of Enrichment and animal must be consistent. Because I just put trampoline and balls in every pen.

- Animal's food, I quite like it. That can choose to mix various kinds of ingredients for animals to eat But I just discovered it on the last day, HA HA.
Therefore, I am not sure the ingredients will have any effect on the growth of the animal.
And the purchase of ingredients, I would like to be able to put the number of ingredients. It is more convenient than clicking to increase or decrease the number of ingredients. And ALL ingredients list to buy instead to buy in a food recipe.

- Can change the appearance of some buildings. At first, when I select the character, it can't change to another character, but I can change a player's character by clicking on the character in the zoo.

- Research, there are quite a variety of types of decorations. Office buildings and animal supplies.

-CRISPR, In the first play I was a bit not used to the game system, so I couldn't edit a gene in time, but in the 2nd round, I was able to mix the snake and rabbit successfully. But have not tested for breeding with the normal animal.

- After quit the game and re-entering the game, the pinned task disappears, need to re-pin again.

- To look staff list in the zoo you must look at the ticket office. There are ticket prices, transportation, and staff.
In case the task to hire more researchers, you need to research them to unlock follow the step, first research ball then tall pine trees and reseacher+1 will show it needs 10 points to unlock.

P.S. That ALL is the experience in which I have played all 3 rounds.
Sorry for my poor English, I'll try my best to give your feedback.🥺🥺🥺

[pierceh25]

Things I noticed while playing:

Changing the size of the pen after it's made instead of deleting

Pausing--> I wanted to try and make my zoo cute but because I couldn't pause I felt like I was panicking trying to make it nice while also trying to figure out
all the other gameplay stuff.

I think it would be nice to be able to do larger landscaping with the walkpaths instead of having to drag over every square. Like maybe holding a control to highlight a larger square area as if I wanted the whole zoo to be grass for example.

More walk through for some of the quests, I felt like sometimes I would get a quest and have no idea where to go and I spend a lot of time trying to find stuff.

Having a confirm button when building instead of just back. I felt like sometimes when I got used to using esc to get out of windows that I ended up getting rid of stuff. Having back only made it confusing if what I had put in would actually stay.

When there were concerns around water or food, once clicking on it maybe showing how to fix that by the zoning/watering troughs.

Instead of having to click on an item to see it's description, hovering over instead would be faster.

I wasn't sure if I saw the option but being able to undo purchases, such as if I accidentally added a bunch of extra tile being able to cancel that.

work ethic impact by pay is nice, I noticed that after adjusting the pay of one of my already placed shops. I didn't notice that when I was doing the original hiring though.

explanation of the research microscope currency to spend on research

like being able to track specific aspects such as food/enrichment for a plot.

Crashed

Explanation on how saltiness/caffeine impact anything.

Universal changes to saltiness/caffeine so I don't have to go into each one individually

The ability to access and make changes to all the enclosures at once instead of having to select each individually would help make things faster when designing.