My Zoo on Facebook - a game guide

For all of you zoo lovers out there, the "my zoo" application for Facebook puts you in charge of your very own zoo. From staking out your first plot of land and open up a humble petting zoo, to running a huge internationally renowned animal haven is all up your zoo management skills. From opening exciting animal exhibits, to hiring the right staff, my zoo tests more than just your zoo keeper skills. To have any chance at y zoo success, you need to be able to balance the books, and keep your guests happy; all while completing the in-game challenges to get access to more animals, and facilities.

Starting out

As a new my zoo entrepreneur, you start out with $25.000 and not much else. At these early first steps of the game, your options are very limited and the game takes you through the first steps almost like a tutorial. Your progress in the game is dependent on the number of challenges you complete, and at this point of my zoo you will find the challenges very quick and easy. First order is to buy a plot of land, make sure you don't buy any more land than the minimum required for opening a petting zoo which will be your next challenge as soon as you have purchased enough land. The first challenge you need to plan ahead for is to make back your starting cash amount, $25 000. This is the first challenge that will be non-trivial and requires some time to complete. To put yourself in a good position to complete that challenge as early as possible and open up some more interesting animal exhibits for you to build, you should be as stringent with your money as possible during the early phases of the game. There will be other challenges down the road that requires lot's more cash at hand than the $25 000, but if you follow the tips in this guide, money will be plentiful soon enough.

So assuming you have your basic land and patting zoo all set up, it's time to get down to the interesting parts of running a zoo; getting some animals. You will have access to a limited amount of animals to begin with, buy one of each animal starting out, again preserving money. The next challenges revolve around setting the ticket prize and buying a certain amount of different species and the total number of animals you have in your zoo. Make sure you buy one of each available species, and fill up with chickens and rabbits and other very cheap animals for bulk if that is needed to complete a challenge.

As soon as the zoo opens, people will start showing up, and this is where you can take advantage of the very simplistic my zoo economy. You will have the opportunity to buy a popcorn cart and a balloon cart to keep your customers happy. Each unit you buy carries a maintenance cost and requires employees to keep them running, more running cost just like in real life. Unlike real life though, the demand for your balloons and popcorn will be unlimited, no matter how many carts you buy, they will still make you a profit. Your focus to make money should be to get as many people into your zoo as possible, and flood them with as many options to spend money as possible. Keep a close eye on the maintenance/income balance in the top right corner, my zoo updates these numbers for you every time you make a change to the ticket prize or buy an animal or a new facility. Buying animals can be a great way to increase income later in the game, as more animals attracts more people, increases your zoo's rating and increases the perceived value allowing you too increase the ticket prize. To make money it is best to keep your ticket prize low and guest satisfaction always at a perfect 100%. This way you will maximize the number of guests. Make sure that you put in money making facilities when they become available, they will be more and more profitable as you progress through the challenge levels, and constantly tweak your ticket prize and the number of animals to keep your daily profits as high as possible. Your next major milestone will be to start a breeding program, and to afford all the facilities needed to successfully breed exotic animals you will need large amounts of cash. The best strategy is to build up your daily income as high as you can before it's time to call it a day, and then let the money roll in over night.

Breeding

To be able to start a breeding program, you will first need to establish an animal hospital and hire a veterinarian. Buy the animal hospital as soon as you have enough money, you will probably have to save up money over night again to be able to start up the breeding program. Breeding animals is important in my zoo, in many ways successful breeding of animals is the purpose of the game. Further down the line, more and more challenges will be related to breeding animals, both in numbers and by degree of difficulty. Getting your breeding program up and running as fast as possible will be a key factor and progressing through the later challenges.

When breeding animals, always look to breed a variety of species, there will be challenges that require you breed a certain amount of species, as well as more than one difficult breed down the line. Go for a variety of species from the beginning, but don't forget to also breed for numbers. Most of the larger animals will have very small litters, making some of the quantity based breeding challenges seem impossible. To make sure you breed large quantities of animals, always breed one of the reptiles in one of your breeding spots. The best animals to breed for numbers are the gila monster, the komodo dragon or the radiated tortoise. These animals will lay up to 7 eggs or even more, and they hatch quickly and are not too challenging to get to breed. If you want to increase the acclaim of your zoo though, mass breeding will not be as effective as breeding the rare and difficult animals. While breeding one panda will give your zoo over 1000 acclaim point, breeding 7 komodo dragons will pretty soon not get you more than 7 acclaim points.

Every time you complete a challenge, make sure to check the status of your zoo. New animals become available regularly when a level is completed, but so do zoo properties, new sales booths, restaurants and decorative or informative displays become available at different intervals. As soon as you open up a new animal, build an exhibit and add as many animals as you can. Then breed it as soon as a breeding slot opens, nothing builds acclaim faster than adding new species and breeding the first specimens.