Zoo Tycoon: Marine Mania Preview

In a way, Marine Mania is a more logical expansion pack to Zoo Tycoon than the game's first expansion pack, Dinosaur Digs. Rather than taking the game in a fantasy direction, Marine Mania adds to the original with 20 new aquatic animals and some accompanying gameplay additions. The new aquatic exhibits, buildings, staff, and shows are elements many zoos actually have, and they extend the original Zoo Tycoon nicely by adding a legitimate true-to-life component.

You'll house the newly available aquatic animals in aquatic exhibits, which are built in roughly the same manner as normal Zoo Tycoon exhibits. After you click and drag to lay the tank's walls, the tank is automatically filled with water. The tanks can be adjusted to suit particular animals' tastes by raising or lowering the wall height and by choosing how much of the tank will be below ground level. Basically, exposing or recessing the tank's base shifts its relative position, while modifying the walls will actually change its depth.

Of course, you'll also have to be sure you maintain your new exhibits. To help keep the water clean, you can build tank filters adjacent to the tanks. But running the tank filters costs money each time you use them. Fortunately, there's also a new staff member available, the marine specialist, to care for the tanks and their inhabitants. The marine specialists have the same duties as a normal zookeepers, and they'll feed and care for the animals and clean the tanks. There is also new scenery for the new aquatic exhibits--a total of 21 different kinds of new scenery, ranging from kelp to sea anemone, will be added by the expansion.

Some new attractions, like the dolphin ride and the shark tunnel, are buildings that can simply be placed in the water. These buildings are quick and easy, and they're nice as simple attractions, but the big highlight will undoubtedly be the new water shows. The process of setting up water shows is decidedly more complicated. You'll need to build an entirely separate tank adjacent to the exhibit tank where the animals live, and you'll also need to build grandstands. The show tank is built with show tank walls, just as exhibit tanks are built with exhibit tank walls, and the two tanks must be the same height if you want to connect them. Once they're adjacent and of identical height, a gate that will allow the animals to travel between the two is automatically added.

The benefits of a good water show will be immediately visible. Successful shows will attract crowds to the nearby grandstands and the nearby areas, and they'll also attract many visitors to the zoo in general. The crowds will cheer and clap at the end of shows, and there are additional sound effects to mark the start and end of the shows, as well as an announcement in the top message box.

Running a successful water show requires some management, like setting the admission price and picking and the tricks for the animal. Guests don't want to see the same show over and over again, and you can keep the shows varied by cycling existing tricks, researching altogether new ones (although you will have to fund the scientific research out of your pocket, as in the original), and adding toys that allow for new tricks. For example, adding a ball will open up the "play with ball" trick for orcas. You'll also be tasked with juggling the frequency of shows. You can choose to never hold shows or hold them continuously, but the crowds don't like seeing tired and mistreated animals, so you'll need to work at finding the right mix.

All objects usable in water shows are marked with a small star in the corner of their icon. For example, show animals like orcas, bottlenose dolphins, California sea lions, sea otters, and great white sharks, are marked with the small star to indicate that they can be used in shows. The stars are also an easy way to tell which walls work for show tanks.

Combined exhibits, using a mix of land and water, are another new feature. Combined exhibits allow creatures like polar bears to meander between snowy, rocky shores and a deep salt-water tank to swim in. Constructing a combined exhibit is much like building a show tank. Building a water exhibit next to an existing land exhibit, or vice versa, will join the two once the tanks are the same height. Joined exhibits are marked by a dotted line across the joining segment. Traditional zookeepers, not marine specialists, care for the combined exhibits.

New maps and scenarios have been added to the game by Marine Mania. There are 10 new scenarios available for play, as well as many new free-form missions, in which you start with a certain amount of cash and then build your own zoo from the ground up with no special objectives to worry about. There are also new tutorial missions to teach you the basics.

Marine Mania also includes the previous Dinosaur Digs expansion pack, giving buyers a little more bang for their buck. The expansion recently went gold, and it should be available on October 18.