Genre: Strategy
Publisher: Encore
Developer: NovaTrix
Release Date: November 11, 2003

Wildlife Park is the latest entry into the already crowded Theme Park genre, and while there's a few twists, it doesn't introduce much. Its closest competitor is Microsoft's Zoo Tycoon, and the key difference between the two is Wildlife Park places equal emphasis on animal satisfaction as well as customer satisfaction.

Graphically, Wildlife Park is very similar to the grand-daddy of all Theme Park games, Rollercoaster Tycoon. They are functional, but don't make you shout for joy, which isn't a bad thing as graphics don't sell these games. When you zoom in, the graphics do become blocky, and the overall animations are limited. There are also issues with some of the text pop-ups, where some of the text falls outside the screen display and is unreadable. The background soundtrack that runs during the games is quite nice though, and is very "World Music" themed. The interface is standard fare for the tycoon games, and is pretty easy to work through. You are limited to three speeds though: paused; normal and fast-forward. The game pauses when you bring up one of the informational screens, such as your financial information, and you need to manually kick it back into gear. The fast-forward didn't seem as fast as I would have liked either; it would have been much better if there were additional speed settings.

The game's campaigns are fairly well done, from a design standpoint, gradually introducing new concepts and increasing the difficulty. Since you need to focus both on animal satisfaction and customer satisfaction, the early campaigns do an excellent job at getting you used to making the animals very happy. And from an animal management standpoint, the game provided excellent feedback as to why that particular animal is unhappy, and what you can do to resolve the issue. Unfortunately, it doesn't do such a great job with the customer feedback. I don't know if this is a bug, but frequently people would walk up to the front gate of my Zoo, completely satisfied and then turn away, also completely satisfied. This would happen even if the entrance fee was set to "free", so it wasn't the gate fee that was the issue. I'd have a customer satisfaction rating of over 90%, but my entrance numbers would be dwindling, most likely because of this issue. You also don't get any concrete feedback about why people are unhappy; you'll get some random complaints about the landscaping, or wanting to know more about the animals, but I didn't get any complaints about pricing, even when I really ratcheted the price up.

The campaign goals break down into a combination of three requisite achievements: achieve a certain animal satisfaction; achieve a certain customer satisfaction; and make a specific amount of money-all other requirements to finishing campaigns are subsets of these three. I found the ones that didn't have a financial requirement the most fun, since it's pretty easy to fall heavily into the red, forcing me to restart the campaign. Although I found the financial campaigns the hardest, I did get a greater sense of accomplishment when I finally finished them. There are campaigns where you need to breed the animals, and those are quite well done and you'll soon feel like a proud parent when the mother gives birth, and getting the animals happy enough to mate is quite a feat. If the animals get unhappy, look out, since the game's version of Greenpeace come flying into action. If people think you are abusing the animals, you'll get protesters outside the main gates, and the animals will be driven to attack the customers.

When you get into running a for-profit Zoo, the game really begins to distance itself from the leaders in the genre, specifically in the controls standpoint. For instance, at a refreshment stand, you can only set the price for the overall product-you can't charge $5 for a hamburger, $3 for a hot dog, etc. Oddly enough, one of the biggest money makers I found was a donation box placed near the exit; even though I had a hard time getting people into the Zoo, they had no problems dropping money into the donation box. Missing also is the ability to run promotions, advertise on billboards and take advantage of the media as you could in Rollercoaster Tycoon. Being able to use these would have added depth to the game, as well as making it more realistic.

The campaigns quickly break down into micro-management, especially when you are dealing with both animal and customer satisfaction. The game desperately needs a way generate a report on top issues and provide better feedback on these issues. You have to click on individual animals or people to get their satisfaction ratings. The park has employees-animal keepers, customer service, etc., there should be a management report where you can consolidate these issues into one screen and act on them.

Where the game does shine though, is in teaching you how to play the game. The first sets of campaigns are really tutorials that educate you gradually on the various mechanisms in the game, and the printed documentation is very thorough. Sadly, it's the level of micromanagement that prevents the game from achieving what would have been a great use of the product-playing the game with your children to educate them on animal care and awareness. If the game didn't straddle the line between one where you had to both make the people and animals happy, as well as had a more streamlined interface that gave better feedback on the issues at hand, this would have been a fantastic educational and family activity. The game doesn't bring anything new to the genre, nor does it provide Tycoon fans anything they aren't currently playing now, especially when those games are most likely much better than this one is. Since the game gives more than a passing glance at animal satisfaction, this game could have been much better if it built upon that better. This one just didn't hold my interest.

Score: 5.5/10