Name: Linda Currie
Title: Senior Designer
Responsible For: Lead Designer for Zoo Tycoon 2: Endangered Species


Questions:

What are “sky trams” and how are they used in Zoo Tycoon 2: Endangered Species?

Visually sky trams look a little like the chair lifts you might see at a ski slope, only cooler (especially when you earn the upgraded seats ; ). Guests will use your sky trams to take tours of your zoo or as transportation to get from point A to B.


Why did you decide to include this sky trams in Endangered Species? What were the initial goals?
In addition to the cool animals that Endangered Species includes, we wanted to provide players with more options in building their zoo “infrastructure”. It’s not uncommon to see zoos with some form of aerial transportation so we felt it was a good feature that would allow players to create zoos with even more of the features they’d find in a real zoo.


How will sky trams impact how players build their zoos and/or play the game?

Sky trams have a lot of impact on the options open to you when building a zoo. Guests use sky trams to take tours of your zoo if entertained guests like to give you tour donations. In addition to the animals, guests like to see interesting things while on your tour (wait until you see the very cool tour objects… : ) so in addition to striving for a 5-star zoo, you can also shoot for a 5-star tour!

Guests also use them to get places. Taking a sky tram is faster than walking so your guests can get around to see their favorite animals faster (and hey, the more animals they see, the happier they are and you know those happy guests = $$$).

You can also use sky trams to create zoos that would have been impossible before. Now you can make an island zoo where you have land masses separated by water with no bridges or paths. But your guests can still get around by getting on your sky tram at one station and getting off at another.

And of course there are the Conservation Areas (don’t worry, eventually we’ll be talking more about those!). These areas have some restrictions on what you can build in them but one thing you can do is build sky trams over them.

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