It’s that time of the month again – Kairosoft review time! We got two new titles from our friends in Japan, and since I’m the only one that’s still sane (or insane) enough to review them, we start with Wild Park Manager (or this is the second one you’ll see, depends on my editor). Zoo Tycoon meets Japanse park management – let’s go!
Zoo Tycoon
I grew up on Zoo Tycoon and Rollercoaster, so when this showed up in our mailbox, I was happy – I’m still waiting for a good Zoo Tycoon-ish game on the Nintendo Switch, so this will have to do until then. If you’re not familiar with Kairosoft, I kindly redirect you to one of my older reviews; I explained it in detail in a few of them. For those already familiar with them, this latest installment puts you in charge of a park, and not one we know from Europe. Japanese parks tend to combine a lot of features into one, hence Wild Park Manager. The same goes for this Kairosoft title, in which you develop things like a plaza, petting zoo, and playground – most of the stuff we find in zoos in Europe.
Wild Park Manager
Like all the other titles, Wild Park Manager challenges you to the edges of ingenuity. It starts with a plaza building, combined with a petting zoo, a playground, some facilities, and contests for the prettiest parks. But as always, they ramp up the difficulty pretty fast. Since the parks are not only for people, you can invite animals scaly, feathered, and furry friends to your park, and they will make it their home if they like it. And that last part is what Wild Park Manager makes hard – you have to juggle people constantly, and animal needs to make your park hospitable to animals by adding trees, shrubs, and other natural elements to it. But some of the more rare critters will only come to check out your park if certain facilities attract them.
Since it’s a nature park, filled with rocks, trees, bedrock, etc., you can grab a pickaxe and make more land usable, finding various materials in the process. These materials can be used to upgrade your facilities or even make special items – which you need to tackle challenges or upgrade certain aspects of your park. Combine this with a wide range of challenges, like nursing saplings until they grow into fine trees, have visitors compete to catch lots of fish, and see if you can hatch various birds and reptiles – and you have an action-packed game. Since it focuses a lot on the different aspects of the game, I felt less connected with this title than I expected when I first saw it. Maybe they should develop a zoo and park title – instead of combining both and hitting not all the sweet spots.
Conclusion
To conclude – Wild Park Manager tries to combine the best of both worlds, added with a good level of challenge, but it feels like a hit-and-miss situation. The cultural difference might not tackle the audience they usually target with these kinds of games. Then again, it’s my personal opinion, and I just felt less invested when playing said title. For a Kairosoft, it ranks somewhere in the lower ranks.
