Zoos! Who hasn’t been to one in a long time?
Due to time constraints and the hustle and bustle of daily life, going to a zoo could be difficult to do. However, these can be done through field trips, family outings, and the like. To go to a zoo means to further learn and understand the many different animals around us. Even if mankind had studied these cute and crazy critters for centuries, there’s just still so little we know about animals in general. It’s even more difficult managing a zoo and not just going to one!
Animals are like different people. Each species has its own special needs and a space where it can live comfortably. They each also have their own temperaments, making them sometimes a surprise to work with. Occasionally, they may even socialize with visitors and provide them with joy and company.
The best part about zoos in general is that they help conserve and protect particular species whilst giving them the aid to survive through human intervention. As a zoo manager yourself, it’s your duty to now be the watchful guardian of these creatures and give them a home they can enjoy in Zoo Park Story.
Created by renowned mobile games developer, Kairosoft, the creators of Dream Town Island, Dream Park Story, Pocket Academy 3, Kingdom Adventurers and many, many more, is yet another member of its growing library of management sims. But instead of trying to manage a campsite, an academy, an airport, a kingdom, an amusement park, or something else entirely, you’re here to manage, as the intro of this article suggests, a zoo. Do you think you’re a good enough zookeeper? Are you ready to mingle with fur, scale, and feather? Read our beginner’s guide to Zoo Park Story below, and we’ll help you keep your earnings high!
Management Sims in Brief
Management sims are nothing new, but that doesn’t mean that their formula is repetitive.
Every management sim out there always involves the importance of resource allocation as well as trying to keep your earnings intact. But to do that, it’s always the uphill climb of working through what you start with. What we mean is that usually, management sims involve establishments and they can start out very, very small. Take EatVenture, for example.
In EatVenture, your goal is to expand your establishment which starts out as a lemonade stand. Eventually, you can turn it into a large, fast food chain, or even a fancy restaurant. Another example we can point out here is Idle Bank Tycoon: Money Empire wherein you start out with a tiny bank that doesn’t accommodate so many people. Eventually, the bank you tend to in this game would eventually grow into something much larger than it initially was. The same goes for most of Kairosoft’s games.
The one thing they all have in common is that they each require resources to make several improvements to the facilities they have present for the player to use. Everything that’s at the player’s disposal costs in-game money which is accumulated overtime while the player is engaged in the game.
However, unlike both EatVenture and Idle Bank Tycoon, Kairosoft’s games are hardly idle games at all. Instead of accumulating resources while the game is turned off, most of Kairosoft’s titles only earn in-game while the game is actively played. This means that the player cannot put the game down and expect to return to an amassed amount of resources.
That said, let’s now tackle the basics of what it takes to be an effective zookeeper and how to keep your zoo afloat!
Zoo Park Story Basics
As the name of the game implies, you’ll be taking care of a zoo in Zoo Park Story.
You start out with only a few animals, namely a guinea pig, a capybara, and a chicken. How this works is that each time visitors of your zoo gain admission, their money goes straight to your treasury. They will also pay to use certain facilities within the zoo premises, which usually include snack stands, rest rooms, shuttle services, and more. The zoo opens at 9am and closes at 8pm. The moment the zoo is closed, all the animals will rest and some of your earnings will go to maintenance fees such as cleaning and feeding. In other words, you’ll be earning money only to spend it. You’re going to want to make a profit out of this, but this is where the challenge comes in.
To earn more than what you spend, the easiest solution to this is to build animal relations with your visitors. By this, we mean, continuously increasing their friendliness levels. Fulfilling the requests of each of the animals you have also helps in increasing these levels. In doing so, a boost in friendliness levels means a boost in admission fees. Though, doing all this is easier said than done since there are many other factors that make your zoo earn, but this should be the crux of your earnings since many of the animals you start with will stick around for a long, long time.
Eventually, your zoo will rank up through a star system wherein earning stars (a maximum of 5) will allow you more amenities, more animals, and visitors from everywhere. However, managing a higher-ranked zoo will require even more skill since there are a lot more animals to feed and maintain. Your maintenance fees will go up the roof, but that’s why you’ll need to ensure that you’ll be earning and not just breaking even. What we mean by this is that you earn more than what you’ve spent in maintaining the zoo.
If you really want to know how to make your zoo the best place to be, then read on and we’ll show you a couple of tips and tricks that could come in handy!
Zoo Park Story Tips and Tricks
This is the part where you get to make your zoo-keeping dreams come true! Whether it be rain or shine, snowstorm or typhoon, your zoo will always have its ups and downs. But do not fret, we’ll now show you how you can make the zoo the best place it can be for both humans and animals (especially the animals). Let’s go!
1. More Animals, More Guests
This probably goes without saying.
What’s a zoo if it only has 1 animal in it? Won’t your visitors get bored? Won’t people lose interest in going there if it’s just the same guinea pig every day? It’s important for your zoo to have animals, and that’s animals in plural form. There have to be more species if you want to attract more guests.
We do mean it, though. Having more animals will attract different kinds of guests. For instance, if you happen to get yourself some penguins in your zoo, a new kind of visitor will start popping up to fork over their money to you. The same goes for different kinds of animals you find, but we’ll talk more about that later.
Your main focus should be to vary your animals and bring in as many guests as you can. This will require some careful decision-making since space will be limited in the zoo at most times, at least until you’ll be able to expand the zoo’s grounds. In the meantime, expand the pens by having more animals of the same type huddle together and you’ll get a steady flow of visitors very quickly.
Though, as visitors come around, the attractions must remain constant. It becomes a problem if you renovate your zoo mid-shift!
2. Build or Relocate at Night
The zoo is busiest during the day.
It’s when the guests would interact with animals, and when all the animals present would do their best at… whatever they do in their pens. These are the hours when you’re earning the most, and it’s best that this shouldn’t be interrupted at all costs. We’re especially talking about curbing the urge to add new animals or move animal pens to newer locations while the zoo is operational.
If you’ve actually tried this, you’ll have quickly noticed that you won’t be earning as much as you should. This is because the animals will be missing from their pens, bringing your visitors to a limited zoo with fewer animals. Less people will go around and interact with these guys and they’re more likely to just go home instead.
As we’ve discussed earlier, the zoo closes at 8pm in-game time, so there will be a bit of a window where all the animals will be asleep and nobody will be coming into the zoo itself. This would be the perfect time when you can renovate and relocate pens of your choice. More importantly, we would like you to first take mental notes of where you’d want certain pens to go so as to not waste any in-game time before the zoo opens.
One good reason you should relocate your pens or facilities is because of combos.
3. Combine Animal Pens or Facilities for Increased Bonuses and AP
Imagine sitting at your favorite coffee shop.
You enjoy the ambience, the comfort, and the coffee. But right outside, you notice how the coffee shop itself looks really nice under the shade of a nearby tree or by the light of a vintage street lamp. The very same thing can be done for animals in a zoo as well. In most zoos, certain animals would be penned according to group—reptiles, large animals, petting zoo animals, etc. This technique can also be done in Zoo Park Story, and for good reason, too!
To organize your zoo means to earn more money and boost the friendliness of certain animals collectively. Think of it as keeping animals together to form a group. In doing so, you may have the chance to increase the admission fee of your zoo depending on the combination. If you happen to place flowers or a tree near your animal pens, the animals nearby will collectively gain more friendliness since it would make them feel like they’re at home.
But it doesn’t stop at trees—what’s an anteater without an anthill nearby? Or how about a bathroom without a sink for guests to wash their hands in? Your guests would be touching each other and the animals with soiled hands! Take advantage of when night falls and try to put certain animals and facilities together to get combos. It’ll be for the good of your zoo.
At the very bottom of this guide is a list of combos for this game. Be sure to check it out. In the meantime, let’s talk about how you can save space in your small zoo (at first).
4. Manage Your Space
You’ll notice soon that space becomes an issue when it comes to building anything.
Anything you put down, any facility or even any animal pen you decide to construct whether it has an inhabitant or not, is going to take up space. You also can’t put plants or trees in pens, so that could make things difficult when it comes to raking in some bonuses from the environment. As your animal families grow, you’ll be told that these critters can only be put in pens that are shaped like squares or rectangles.
As much as possible, building animal pens in squares would be the easiest space saver (of course, this may also depend on the size of the square itself). Granted that you start out with a very small zoo, building in rectangles could easily take up a lot of space. That said, the pens couldn’t also be built on footpaths, so they’ll always have to be on the grass. Take also into account what surrounds the animal’s pen. You can’t have too many things around it otherwise people will not be able to interact with the animals within.
Another way you can save space is to try and space your animal pens out, though this may take some various remodeling sessions and very careful planning. If the pens are spaced out, the guests can come over and visit the animals with ease. The only downside to this is that when the animal families grow, naturally or otherwise, expansion may eat into the spots in which the visitors can walk. Once again, this is why planning this out beforehand is quite important.
Regardless of whether your animal pens are spaced out or not, one stat of theirs bears great significance for the entire zoo.
5. Increase Animal Friendliness Through Gifts
Animals by themselves are mysterious creatures.
There’s very little we know about them since not all of them are as docile as they seem. They could bite, cause trouble, or generally just be difficult to handle all at once. Just like people, animals require some interaction and in a way, they will take time to get used to those within their surroundings, especially people. In Zoo Park Story, your solution to unfriendly animals is to give them gifts from time to time, although there is a limit to this per in-game day.
When you start getting more dangerous animals, in our case, we found a bear and she started out with the “Dangerous” status, she can barely be interacted with by guests. What had to be done here was we would give her things that bears would normally eat in the wild, namely meat and fish. Over time, the bear loosened up and her friendliness level was brought to neutral. This was when more guests started to flock towards her and interact with her.
Of course, most of the animals you get beforehand are usually quite docile. If you happen to have multiple animals of the same kind in the same pen, their friendliness levels should grow naturally. However, you may intervene here by giving them gifts that they’d like, like their favorite food or promote exercise with toys. Increasing friendliness levels also provides special interactions with guests.
To illustrate, animals completely at neutral friendliness will be put in pens. When you raise that enough to level their friendliness up, the next level would allow guests to directly feed the animals. After that, when the animals get even friendlier, the pen will be removed and guests can freely go where the animals roam. Then, it gets even more exciting. Depending on the size of the animal, at another friendship level, guests may pick up or even ride the animal on their own volition.
The greatest part about increasing animal friendliness overall is that you also get earnings from this. Your admission fees will increase by 10G per animal, per level. So if you’ve managed to get the friendship level of 5 different animals up in a single day, you’ll have an extra 50G in admission fees. Hey, that’ll help cover for maintenance costs and more!
As friendship grows among animals and guests, perhaps love would blossom between the animals themselves? It certainly could!
6. Aid in Making Animal Couples
When animals come together in a group, you know that sometime, mating season is bound to happen.
This is just how animals work. They’ll reproduce if they aren’t feeding in a congregation. Sometimes, their mating habits could get violent, like cats, but thankfully nature’s brutality isn’t reflected here in real-time pixel violence (this is a Kairosoft game we’re talking about, after all). Anyway, back to animals falling in love with one another.
As time goes by, you may notice that some of your animals may want to attempt courtship to other animals of the same species and of the opposite gender. The prospect of this happening could take a few in-game months to a few in-game years. Once this happens, your assistant, Fauna Parker, will notify you that this one animal is interested in one of their penmates.
Once that happens, you’ll be prompted to assist in helping them get a better chance at winning the other party over at the cost of some animal points. We highly recommend spending your animal points on these, especially because there are benefits to having animal couples. There’s still the possibility that the act of courtship may fail, however. But as the old adage goes: “Better to have loved and lost than to not have loved at all.”
If the courtship session was a success, the two animals will become a couple and their friendliness levels will rise together. After a couple of in-game months or so, the couple may produce a baby together which will grow in the same pen as its parents. This will greatly boost the attraction at your zoo. However, keep in mind that the baby won’t stay a baby forever; you will need to add more space to the animals’ pen in preparation for when it grows into an adult.
Of course, this all entails the need for more animals to be in your zoo. Think of all the cute babies that’ll attract zoo goers! You may want to constantly explore if you want to increase the variety of the animals in your zoo.
7. Exploration and How to Negotiate with Animals
Exploration means bringing your zoo owner out to the wild where they can try to make new friends!
As soon as you head out to explore, a small scene at the bottom of the screen will pop up to show your progress. Each time your zoo owner approaches a patch of tall grass, they will attempt to uncover what’s behind it. Occasionally, you’ll encounter a lot of AP, but otherwise, it’s a new animal! This will then prompt you if you’d like to commence negotiations with the new animal.
The rules of negotiating with the new animal are simple. You will need to constantly invite them over by using three choices:
- Increasing their food budget
- Giving them food on the spot
- Attempting to play with them
Each of these will garner a different response from the animal. Though, you have to also be mindful that most of these will require resources to spend. The first one will be for the long term since you’ll be increasing the budget of the animal’s food, thus drastically increasing the price of maintenance fees. The second option will cost you money directly out of your pocket, so do this if you feel like you have a surplus of money with you. The last one will be taken from your AP. Since AP is a precious commodity, we strongly advise you to use this last one sparingly.
Occasionally, while you negotiate, Fauna will make recommendations, but we’d like to tell you that these sometimes don’t work. What you should do is to keep trying different options since the animal would turn away from you and not want to join. This will be signified by a stormy cloud above the prospective animal. If you send them different signals during this time and not the one that caused them to be put in a stormy mood in the first place, they will bounce back and probably come closer to the finish line.
To really help you in winning over a prospective animal, you may want to bring over your friendliest animals. Bring as many as you can. Conversely, if you bring those who aren’t as friendly, their friendliness levels will also rise as you attempt to gain a new family member for your zoo.
With more animals comes more responsibility. That also means that your zoo may go up a rank or two while you play. When you hit rank 3 (that’s 3 stars), your zoo will have what’s called Animal Features, but you will want to take advantage of this.
8. Pick Matching Animals for Animal Features
The zoo is technically a show that you run, and with every show out there, there are bound to be stars.
What do we mean by this? This is where Animal Features come in. As mentioned earlier, when your zoo hits 3 stars, you will be able to participate in this endeavor. An NPC named Franklin Feline will compile a set of features for 3 of your chosen animals. These 3 animals will have what are called Feature Points which are located at the bases of their podiums at the Animal Features screen.
Feature Points are automatically generated as you take care of the animals. A higher amount of Feature Points will generate a larger amount of AP, so pick wisely. We highly recommend picking animals that you think are alike. If Franklin Feline thinks that the feature will be worth it, he’ll say so.
Once Franklin Feline is done compiling features, this will become available as a campaign that can further boost your zoo’s popularity as well as grant a brief increase in visitorship and income. Launch this and watch your visitor count soar. After which, you may even research the next feature to follow this one. If you can make a chain of features back-to-back, your zoo will be raking in a lot of money and AP for several months on end. Take advantage of the features; you’ll never know how well you’ll do.
A campaign? What’s that? We’re glad you asked, dear reader!
9. Use Campaigns Sparingly
How else do you think people would hear about your zoo?
You could scatter pamphlets around town, tell the local paper that your zoo’s the bee’s knees, offer a shuttle service to and from the zoo, and maybe even more. This is called advertising or in other words, campaigns.
Using a campaign to boost your zoo’s popularity is a great way to get a temporary surge of visitors at the cost of a small sum. Of course, this is relative to the rank of the player’s zoo. However, You can go overboard with using campaigns by having them done all at once. The good thing about this is that you’re to expect a ton of money, but the bad thing is how you’re going to use this money for when your zoo might be in debt (let’s hope this doesn’t happen).
When you think you aren’t making enough money, and perhaps you’re just breaking even, this is the perfect time for you to start a campaign. The swell of visitors would drastically boost your earnings. You don’t even have to wait for the moment your zoo is in the pits. How about during a storm? Or maybe just while it’s raining? Campaigns are perfect for these situations. You’ll be saving your zoo a ton of trouble. Consider launching campaigns when your situations look dire.
There’s one more thing we would like to make clear about Zoo Park Story…
10. Actively Play the Game for Extra AP and Events
As we’ve mentioned earlier, most Kairosoft games aren’t actually idle games.
That’s right. All you’re doing in Zoo Park Story won’t be reflected while the game’s offline. You’ll need to play to progress and to progress, you’ll need to keep an eye out for different events and AP. Each time an animal has the AP icon above their heads, this is time for you to tap the icon and harvest the AP they’ve generated. This’ll also spare you the issue of hoarding these for a rainy day.
Other than this, your animals will occasionally ask you for things. Don’t hesitate in giving them these. It’ll improve their friendship levels as well as make them happier animals overall. Some may ask for exercise, others will definitely ask for food. Be prepared to give them what you have!
Before we bring this guide to a close, we would like to show you all possible combinations you can obtain while playing Zoo Park Story.
Possible Combinations List
Below is a list of possible combinations you can put together in your zoo. If the combo falls fulfills the Combo of Any 3 category, this means that you do not need to have all the requirements but only 3 of them.
| NAME OF COMBO | REQUIREMENTS | COMBO OF ANY 3 |
| Anteater | Anteater, Anthill | No |
| Beak | Platypus, Shoebill, Toucan | No |
| Bearred Panda | Bear, Polar Bear, Panda | Yes |
| Big Bird | Peacock, Ostrich, Shoebill | No |
| Black and White | Penguin, Tapir, Panda | No |
| Cairo | Gold Chimpanzee Statue, Cairo House | No |
| Carnivore | Meerkat, Polar Bear, Hyena, Tiger, Lion | Yes |
| Cat | Lion, Tiger, Meerkat | No |
| Chap Chap | Hippopotamus, Fountain | No |
| Coffee Shop | Coffee Shop, Street Lamp | No |
| Farm | Chicken, Pig, Horse, Sheep | Yes |
| Flat | Platypus, Crocodile, Tsuchinoko | No |
| Flying Bird | Duck, Flamingo, Toucan | No |
| Food Wagon | Curry Wagon, Crepe Wagon | No |
| Freshly Picked | Gorilla, Banana Tree | No |
| Full of Elephants | Elephant, Curry Wagon | No |
| Garbage Disposal | Vending Machine, Trash Can | No |
| Giraffe | Giraffe, Souvenir Shop, Shrub Giraffe | No |
| Good Night | Armadillo, Koala, Tapir | No |
| Hood | Rice Ball Shop, Hot Dog Shop, Snack Stand | No |
| Horse | Horse, Horse, Shrub Horse | No |
| Hygiene | Toilet, Hand-Wash Area | No |
| I Like Baths | Capybara, Japanese Macaque, Bear | No |
| Intimidation | Anteater, Red Panda, Peacock | No |
| Kindness | Zoo Map, Information Office, Animal Audio | No |
| King | Lion, Rocky Place | No |
| Koala | Koala, Eucalyptus Tree | No |
| Large Animal | Rhinoceros, Giraffe, Elephant, Bison | Yes |
| Long Legs | Giraffe, Ostrich, Flamingo | No |
| Lookalike | Kangaroo, Photo Stand-In | No |
| Marsupial | Kangaroo, Koala | No |
| Miniature Animal | Guinea Pig, Rabbit, Squirrel, Meerkat | Yes |
| Monkey | Japanese Macaque, Gorilla | No |
| On the Tree | Koala, Squirrel, Japanese Macaque, Red Panda | Yes |
| Panda | Panda, Bamboo Grove | No |
| Pink | Flamingo, Azalea, Cherry Blossoms | No |
| Polar Bear | Polar Bear, Ice Block, Ice Cream Shop | No |
| Pyon Pyon | Kangaroo, Rabbit, Penguin | No |
| R&R | Bench, Vending Machine, Tulip | No |
| Rabbit | Rabbit, Shrub Rabbit | No |
| Reptiles | Giant Tortoise, Crocodile, Snake | No |
| Rodent | Guinea Pig, Capybara, Squirrel | No |
| Restaurant | Rice Ball Shop, Bamboo Grove, Pine Tree | No |
| Sand Dunes | Camel, Column Cactus, Flower Cactus | No |
| Shimashima | Tiger, Zebra | No |
| Spring | Bench, Japanese Cherry Blossoms, Japanese Cherry Blossoms | No |
| Strong | Bison, Tiger, Bear, Lion | Yes |
| Sweets | Ice Cream Shop, Crepe Wagon | No |
| Tale | Tortoise, Japanese Macaque, Bear | No |
| Tall | Giraffe, Baobab Tree | No |
| Tsunotsuno | Bison, Elephant, Rhinoceros | No |
| UMA | Sky Fish, Chupacabra, Tsuchinoko | No |
| Ursine | Bear, Forest | No |
| Vacation Style | Toucan, Hibiscus, Palm Tree | No |
| Water Place | Fountain, Hand-Wash Area | No |
| White Animal | Sheep, Rabbit, Polar Bear | No |
Remember that the key to being a successful zoo owner is to not give up for your animals. Put your animals’ well-being above all else and you’ll have a really effective zoo in your hands. The best way to do this is to remember what you’ve learned in this guide:
- Get more animals. Be it through the Animal Hub or through Exploration, getting more animals to join your zoo family will inadvertently bring in more guests.
- Always perform your zoo maintenance and renovations at night. You’ll risk interrupting your earnings flow during the daytime if you don’t.
- Combining your animal pens together will produce more bonuses and AP. Find which combos work for you or refer to the table above.
- Your zoo has a limited space. Consider putting pens in squares to keep yourself from struggling to put down more facilities.
- Give your animals gifts. Their friendliness levels should rise when you do. Just be sure to give them more the next day!
- Bring animal couples together to the best of your ability. Babies bring in more visitors!
- Negotiating with animals is a minigame in itself. Try to use different tactics if you don’t think the animal will come to you.
- Animal features should be made the most out of. Get matching animals or find animals with something in common among them to get the best feature possible!
- Campaigns should be used sparingly, especially as a fall-back to losing money.
- Playing the game actively greatly helps in earning AP as well as in-game money. Don’t let it idle!
And this sums up our beginner’s guide for Zoo Park Story by Kairosoft. Wherever you go in your zoo, just remember that everyone’s out to have fun—especially your animals. Take good care of them!
Are you an experienced zoo owner? Have you completed the game and all combinations? If you have any knowledge to impart onto fledgling zoo owners, impart away at our comments section down below!