Like Planet Coaster, Planet Zoo provides over a thousand building pieces such as benches, lighting, flowers, trees, and items such as individual planks of wood, glass, rocks, and roof tiles. This includes hiring staff, constructing guest amenities and staff facilities, performing research, and working towards the conservation of threatened and endangered species. In addition to ensuring animal welfare, the player must deal with managing the park as an institution. As such, elements such as inbreeding may have negative consequences on progeny. Each animal has their own genome within the game's breeding system, which reflect its life expectancy, size, health, and fertility and can be passed down through offspring. Predators can attack and kill other animals, but unlike in Zoo Tycoon, cannot attack guests. Each species has its own requirements and needs that players must satisfy through creation of a suitable exhibit environment and adequate behavioral enrichment. For instance, wolves adopt a pack mentality and animals of the African plains (such as elephants, giraffe, zebras, wildebeest, and buffalo) can live together in a single mixed-species habitat.

Animals, controlled by artificial intelligence, behave similarly to their real-life counterparts. Planet Zoo tasks players with building a zoo, with animal species in the base game and new species available through sixteen separate downloadable content packs and the Deluxe Edition.

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