I've officially renounced this game in lieu of Zoo Tycoon 2 and will hopefully never play it again, so this guide isn't getting updated (and it mostly focuses on the "Zoo Empire" scenarios). But I'll try to answer your questions if you're stuck.


If you're here because of technical issues, or questions like "What are Star Animals?" or "What is visitor awareness?", kindly navigate to the "Miscellaneous ♥♥♥♥" section.


Marine Park Empire (formerly Zoo Empire) is a relatively obscure simulation game where players take control of their own zoo/marine park/both.

I'm assuming you already know this, since you bought the bloody thing. But just in case someone received this as a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ Christmas gift or is perusing this game's 1 guide seeing if it's worth the money, there you are.

If you don't own this game, you're probably asking, "Is this a good game? Is it as good as Zoo Tycoon/Rollercoaster Tycoon/etc?"

The answer is, no. MPE is a shell of what those games are, and not even nostalgia can save this ♥♥♥♥ (trust me, I adored this when I was nine). It's a shovelware Zoo Tycoon ripoff made during the time when that game was getting popular. It's buggy, annoying, lacking in content, and just not as good.

It's also rife with hilarious typos.



But guess what? Zoo Tycoon isn't on Steam, and this game is. So until Microsoft gets their ♥♥♥♥ together, this is what we got.

When you get down to it, MPE's a decent replacement, and I've already slogged through it so you don't have to figure out all its stupid quirks on your own. This game has a hell of a lot more value if you know how to navigate it, so let's get to it.

This game's UI design looks like it was made by a four-year-old with ADHD, so it's understandable if you're having some trouble just playing the thing. Luckily I'm here to help you figure ♥♥♥♥ out.


There is a tutorial, you know. But it's incredibly annoying, so the author of this ♥♥♥♥♥♥ guide will deign to help you.

• Left Click: I don't have to ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ explain what left click does.
  
• Right Click: Rotate the camera.
  
• Scroll Wheel: Zoom in/out. (No, there's no replacement and there's no changing the hotkeys, get ♥♥♥♥♥♥ laptop users.)
  
• Shift-Click: Sell.
  
• Ctrl-Click: Move/Adjust objects.
  
• 1-4: Accelerate the game speed.
  
• 0: Pause the game.
  
• G: Turn on/off the grid.
  
• Ctrl-Z: Undo. (No, there's no redo button.)

A bunch of letter hotkeys do stuff with the menus but I don't care enough to list them. Press them yourself.



I bet you're wondering what all those buttons on the left do.

They do ♥♥♥♥ all.

• Movie Clipboard: Video capture. Sounds pretty nifty, except it crashes the ♥♥♥♥ out of your game.
  
• Camera: Take a photo. That's nice, right? Oh, it would be - IF IT WASN'T A BLACK ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ SCREEN.
• Book: A photo album for your useless black pictures.
  
• Compass Thingy: Annoying minimap that no one uses.
  
• Sun: Some useless ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ tips that tell you nothing helpful.
  
• Ugly Dude: Career Menu. You can access your ♥♥♥♥♥sona's information there during Scenarios, and take out animals you earned/put away. Even though it's useless and greyed out in Freeplay, they didn't remove the button because they're dumb.
  
• Red Minus: Delete ♥♥♥♥. Also accomplished by shift-clicking.
  
• Ellipsis (the damn dots you uncultured swine): The options menu. Also accomplished by Esc.

Then of course there's game speed and the pause button. Below that is the Undo button, and the calendar, so you can realize that you've been playing this awful Zoo Tycoon ripoff for 80 years and it's time to stop.

So as you can see all those buttons are ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ useless and you should never click them.




On the left is your Zoo Rating, which ranges from 0 to 5 stars. I have none because I'm stupid.

Then there's your money, which I hopefully shouldn't have to explain to you.

Finally, there's the Notifications section on the right. There, you will be constantly spammed with useless info about your zoo every 5 seconds. It also dings really loudly when it wants your attention.




These are the four buttons that get ♥♥♥♥ done.


But we're going to skip all but the last one because they have to do with the other parts of the guide.







This is the Information Center. It's where you conduct managerial operations to increase the overall health and wellbeing of your zoo. In other words, you click buttons and ♥♥♥♥ happens. From top to bottom on the right...

Management: Rename the zoo, and open and close it, or change the admission fee. You can also take out a loan (though you'll never need to), train your staff (more on that in the appropriately-named section), and advertise your zoo and specific animals to bring in more customers and get more $$$$$$$$$$$$$

Lists: This tab is useless and you'll never click on it. The only good thing about it is that it's the easiest way to see if your animal is famous yet. The third List button is one of many areas dedicated to your visitors and animals' whining, and the least helpful of them all, so don't bother looking at it.

Report: This tab involves copious amounts of numbers, so you may be tempted to ignore it. However, there are some useful bits here, namely the top and bottom Report buttons. The former lets you see what's contributing to your rating (the number of stars you have, dumbass). The latter is the "visitors' whining" screen that's actually useful. Use it to figure out what the ♥♥♥♥, specifically, is wrong with your zoo.

Goals: If you forgot your mission briefing, you can see what obscure goals you're trying to accomplish here. The second button shows secondary goals, but this menu is pretty useless since they don't tell you when you've completed them, only what you're supposed to be doing. Thanks a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bundle.

Research: I don't need to explain, right? Much like a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ Facebook game, you click a button, wait in real time for a bar to fill, then get stuff.


Now that you're a master of navigating awful UI design, it's time to put your skills to the test and ACTUALLY PLAY THE ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ GAME.

If you've played Zoo Tycoon before, you'll have a pretty good idea about what to do. But due to the confusing UI, quirky game mechanics, godawful AI, and existence of troglodytes who haven't played Zoo Tycoon, I'm going to need to write a bit more than "it works just like Zoo Tycoon".


Before you can add animals, you'll need to make an exhibit. Your tools are located in the top button of the tab with a stupid elephant on it. If you've played with a map editor before, you got the right idea. Except basic enough for children and stupid people.



First is the brush tool. Raise or lower the terrain, add water, smooth or sharpen terrain, etc. Just keep in mind that if the ground isn't perfectly flat when you try to place basically anything, you might as well go ♥♥♥♥ yourself because it ain't gonna work.

If you want to add water, keep in mind that fresh water is always at the same level and can't be added to terrain below or too high above water level. Salt water, however, can be added to a pit at any height. Kinda dumb but whatever.

Move your eyeballs to the right and click the tabs to look at more terraforming options. Among them are texture brushes, saving/loading exhibits - actually a pretty nifty feature (if you're a lazy ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥) - and fences, for some dumb reason.

I put my years of Minecraft skills to the test and came up with this creation.



What was the point of this again?

Right, some animals like flat exhibits and some like hilly ones. But be careful with landscape exhibits, because the animals will whine about it being too hilly. Luckily they don't really care as long as their other complaints are appeased.


Now that I've wasted all my funds on... whatever that is, it's time to actually build an exhibit! You can either build a normal exhibit with a fence, or one below ground. Just make sure that there's a gate and a way down, because the zookeepers won't shut the ♥♥♥♥ up about it even if you put them directly in the exhibit.

Turn on the grid and click the dumb-looking human. Dark areas are where they can't walk. All you need to to have light squares connected so that they can walk down into the exhibit.

It's easy! Just start with a base...



And... uh...



There are times when you need to either deal with staff constantly pinging you about the lack of an entry, or make your pit of death more shallow.



With that mess done, make sure your exhibits have gates so the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ zookeepers can get in - don't worry, though, they'll spam you if you forget.

Next, put the animals in the exhibit. If it says they escaped, make sure the fence is complete. Use the grid with large/small animals selected to see where they can walk. Every white spot on the edges need to be filled. If even one tile doesn't have a fence in it, the game will flip the ♥♥♥♥ out and your animals will get tranquilized and stuffed into a box. Is that what you want?

With the animal in the exhibit, we can move on to the actual (kinda) fun part.

Interior ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Decor

Double click the animal. You'll probably see the zoo consultant whining about something or other, but that's not what you want. Look at the buttons.

The ones on the right let you release the animal for a visitor happiness bonus, sell them for cold hard cash, see what the consultant wants to nag you about, or enter third or first-person view - which is almost, maybe, kinda cool. If you're seven.

The button on the lower left cycles through the preferences, status, and so on. Basically, you can see what they want and if they're currently dying or not. This is what you want to click, until you see this screen.



(If everything is white, you're either doing your job correctly or the animal escaped.)

You can click the square at the bottom to pop out animal preferences. From there, click the red text and you'll be jumped directly to the object in the store catalogue. Wow, this game actually did something right for once!



Obviously, what you want to do now is put ♥♥♥♥ in the exhibit until the text turns white. That's about all there is to it.

Just one note: animals in this game have tank controls. Lara Croft looks like a ballet dancer in comparison to this ♥♥♥♥. You could connect to ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ dial-up before these idiots navigated their way around a tree. If you notice your animals dying all the time despite having plenty of water and food, the problem lies with you putting trees, big rocks, and toys in the middle of the exhibit. Move them to the edge.

Some objects, like tiny rocks, don't have collision. You can check by trying to put an object under the animal. If it's red, put it on the edge. If it's green, place it wherever you want.

And if you get tired of finding creative ways to place rocks, just spam them in the corner. No one will ever know.

Finally, if you can't place water because the exhibit is under the water level, put in a dish of water, found on the third tab along all the other animal furniture.

If you're not a total idiot, you'll end up with something like this.



Congratulations! You now have a fundamental understanding of how to play this game. This is basically the whole thing, so buckle in.


Your job ain't done. Now that the animals are no longer homeless, now you need to make sure they don't die.
A good way to start is to, uh, hire some zookeepers to feed them. Instead of having 20 random zookeepers running around like idiots, it's better to assign them to a certain exhibit. You can do this by using these urine-soaked flags. I like to give them helpful names.



Double-click the zookeeper, go to the last tab, and assign them to the exhibit. Now they'll walk around forever cleaning up ♥♥♥♥ and never leaving. Great!

But if you think that's enough, you're ♥♥♥♥♥♥' wrong. Your animals will constantly breed and produce more and more babies. Overpopulation means the exhibit, once perfect, will need more toys, trees, etc. If you don't sell excess creatures, your animals will be unhappy, and your visitors will ♥♥♥♥♥ about it.

At random, your animals will get sick. Usually this resolves without issue, but sometimes, it becomes absolute ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ insanity. It spreads everywhere, never stops, and the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ vets take so long that they end up starving to death because they're in a tent. Meanwhile, the visitors hate unhappy animals and take a gigantic penalty for seeing them.

If this is the case, make a quarantine out of sight and stick all sick and recovering animals in there. Or, better yet, sell all the animals and start the ♥♥♥♥ over.

Finally, you may notice that your animal, while starving or thirsting to death, will decide to go into their shelter and take a nap, all while whining about being hungry and causing the visitors to flip out about the unhappy animal they can't see.

They'll then come out of the den about two hours later and promptly drop dead of starvation. There is absolutely nothing you can do about this. I like to sell animals that constantly say they're unhappy but won't GO TO THE ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ WATER POOL, but once they're in the den, you're ♥♥♥♥♥♥.

Now that you have some animals, it'd probably be a good idea to hire some people to take care of the place while you sit suspended above, watching the shenanigans.

This part is actually fairly simple. There are only three buttons: Hire staff, look at the employees you already have, and put down the three staff-related buildings.

Security stations have some function, reducing the rate of vandalism in their area. (Click them to see where their influence is.) A single first aid station is just to stop visitors from complaining. And finally, the staff office does nothing, but again, your slaves employees will complain.

So it's better to just put one down somewhere, and... uh...



I will clarify an older statement by saying that you'll never need a loan, if you're not a complete idiot like me.

• Zookeepers: They take care of land animals by feeding them, picking up ♥♥♥♥, drugging them if they escape, etc. Assign one or two to each exhibit, and hire about 5-10 to just walk around.
  
• Marine Specialists: Like zookeepers, but for marine animals. There's no other difference, except they actually go diving in the tanks, instead of sitting in the exhibit staring blankly off into the distance.
  
• Groundskeepers: When your ♥♥♥♥♥♥ guests decide not to use a trash can, which is often, they clean it up. You're going to need at least 10 of them. Maybe more.
  
• Maintenance Workers: They repair vending machines. That's it. It says something about repairing fences, but as far as I know, fences don't wear out with time. And if an animal breaks a fence, you have to put it back your own ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ self. About 5-10 of these will do it.
  
• Tour Guide: Tour guides basically just talk to visitors, giving a small happiness boost. It's worth it to have a handful of them.
  
• Facilities Manager: They let you research better fencing. Other than that, I don't know what these bald idiots do. It says they train maintenance workers and make sure they perform well, but employees' skills never improve without training (and they don't get a buff just by hiring them either).
• Zoo Curator: "Old Nigel Thornberry" will help you research new animals.
  
• Veterinarian: These smug ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ just research diseases. Zookeepers are the ones who actually cure the animals.
  
• Visitor Services Manager: These guys "supervise the activities of the tour guides", and by the look on his face, you probably don't want to be caught alone with him if you're one of those tour guides. He also researches food and drink.

Note: You only need one of the "manager" types each unless you want to research more things at once. But keep in mind that if you fire an employee you used to research something, you lose the research.

Like all slaves, they may need a bit of convincing to get them to do what you want. In that case, you should head to the training center, where for a couple hundred a month you can beat your employees into submission. Check back every few months until all their skills are at 100, and they are nothing more than mindless servants bending to your twisted will.



That's about it. It's easy enough to hire employees, put them in training for a few months, and leave them alone. What's not easy is...

Designing exhibits is easy, and hiring staff is even easier. You go to open your zoo, thinking you're going to have a great time.

Wrong. You see, the fun has only just begun, but not for you.


The visitors in MPE are ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

The roster contains fat old ladies, fat middle-aged ladies, grumpy old men who look like politicians, ♥♥♥♥♥♥ little boys with no parents who vandalize your stuff, ugly girls in a tutu, a somewhat racist caricature of a black person in a hoodie with a backwards baseball cap, a teenager in a green striped shirt who looks to be between male and female, redheads with a necktie, a creepy guy in a coat with no sleeves, and a fat guy in an annoying brown jacket.



Make no mistake, every single one of them is a gigantic ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ douchewipe.

They will drop trash right next to trash cans then complain about the trash they just dropped, whine about there not being enough streetlamps (and everything else under the sun), have to use the bathroom every 2 ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ minutes, make this really weird whistling mating call, speak in Simlish (yes, they ripped sound files from The Sims 2), and cluster up in zerg swarms and ruin everything. The guests are monsters. They are pure evil.



But you must appease them. You see, you may have noticed the wide-eyed, blank smile. They are zombies who devour life essence to try and fill the void. If you do not feed them and entertain them, they will consume your soul instead.

Or maybe you're already one of them?


Visitors need paths to walk on (though they will go off path if something gets their attention), a constant supply of restrooms, food, and drink stalls along those paths, and an occasional facility like a camera station or an education center to entertain them.

This may seem simple, but it's far from it. Finding a balance of how often to place these rest stops is an ordeal in and of itself. You may be tempted to spam trash cans and food stalls, which is fine. But even once the visitors are happy with their basic needs... The miscellaneous complaints begin.

They will find something to complain about. Not enough lightposts. Not enough maps. No first aid station. No telephones nearby. Not enough food variety. If you don't cater to their exact whims, your zoo will suffer. And they'll make some really sarcastic, mean comments about it in the meantime.



Also, sometimes they do this.



That seems to mean that you need more facilities nearby to help reroute them from that area. I call this phenomenon "zerg swarming". Only a five-star zoo can save your planet from these monsters.


If you can manage to balance random animal deaths, making your lazy staff actually do something, and appeasing the demands of the visitors, you will have become a master of MPE.

You don't have to buy the rest of the game. "Free game" is this game's only non-scenario game mode. You get a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ zoo of your own, where you can do whatever the ♥♥♥♥ you want. You get to choose from a variety of stupid names like "Planet Animal" or "Animaland", as well as pick from a bunch of crappy 2D backdrops and 10x10px texture terrain. Or if you're a lazy ♥♥♥♥♥ you can pick a pre-made zoo.

I chose to name mine "♥♥♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Zoo", and I placed it in the middle of a volcanic wasteland.



The only difference from Scenario is that you're stuck there forever, and your creepy ♥♥♥♥♥sona isn't around. That was pretty nice until I realized that the ♥♥♥♥♥ took all the animals I won in Scenario with her, which DEFEATS THE ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ POINT CONSIDERING YOU CAN'T RESEARCH THEM.

Luckily, you can unlock those animals by putting them in a Scenario and making them have sex. Still pretty annoying, though.

Anyway, Free Play kinda speaks for itself. You can do whatever the ♥♥♥♥ you want. That's the end of it.


I'm not going to put a walkthrough for every scenario. Why? Because they're all the ♥♥♥♥♥♥' same. Follow the objectives and you'll be fine. If you don't know what some of them mean because this game reads like it was written by a man with a tenuous grasp of Engrish who was having a stroke, then scroll down to "Miscellaneous ♥♥♥♥".

But here are a few tips you need to know:

When you first start the game, you'll need to make a ♥♥♥♥♥sona. This is a persona with no customization available who's meant to represent you. If you're white, blond, and look like a complete tool. You can make a zookeeper or a marine specialist. It really doesn't matter.



Once you make them, you can pick a scenario and progress through the game. However, the stupid ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ narrator is the most difficult person to read over I've ever encountered, so you're going to have to sit there and listen to him for five minutes until he decides to shut up.

Scenarios are mostly just for fun. You get these fake awards and some money to spend - only in future scenarios, not in free play - and you can unlock animals. Which then have to be placed in a future scenario to be unlocked in free play. Fantastic!

By the way, secondary objectives (that don't offer animals as rewards) mean ♥♥♥♥ all. You have no way of knowing if you've obtained them in a scenario, so there's no reason to replay scenarios. A lot of the rewards/trophies/etc are duplicates so you'll get another copy later. Just don't bother, seriously.

It's the moment you've all been waiting for: the FAQ. If you're here, you've probably encountered a really obscure problem that no one knows how to answer. In fact, the only resources about this game are from a few BigFishGames forum threads and... that's it.

Luckily I'm here to finally answer all your stupid questions and address common problems, so let's go.

TECHNICAL ISSUES:

No they're not (probably). Saves in freeform mode are found on the title screen. Saves for scenarios are found by going to the scenario screen, then clicking "load". (Yeah, it's dumb.)

Not without third-party tools like DxWnd. Trust me, I've tried.

Run in compatibility mode for Windows 7, Vista, or XP. Look up a guide on how to do this yourself.

Try PgUp/PgDown, but they never worked for me. Get a real mouse (you can even use it just for scrolling and play on the touchpad at the same time), or play on a desktop.

*inhales* DOn"T ALT TAB WHILE IT'S LOADING

I know us kids need to talk to our online boyfriends on AIM or whatever, but wait 30 ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ seconds for it to reach the title screen before alt-tabbing.

If you figure out how to fix this, let me ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ know. The sound files are encrypted, so you can't even replace it with blank noise. The only thing you can do is not include vending machines in the park, or deal with it. It goes away for a little bit. Eventually.

It's the river boat ride. They didn't make the sound fade based on distance, and every boat on the river adds another of those sounds to the pile.

Delete the ride, close it, or mute the game. That's your only choice.

GAMEPLAY QUESTIONS:

I mean, I have 100+ hours on it for a reason. The formula is addicting. They just did in the most annoying ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ way possible. It's the same reason why you keep playing Clash of Clans even though you know it has more paywalls than gameplay.

As far as I know, this is the only half-decent Zoo Tycoon alternative available on Steam, and probably the highest quality (as shocking as that might seem...) If you can find a CD version of Zoo Tycoon or Zoo Tycoon 2, get that instead. If you are gung ho on digital downloads only, your options are MPE, an even more shovelware tycoon game, or piracy.

(Note: HtFDIPTG, Inc and its affiliate SnickerToodles are not advocating piracy, simply pointing out that Zoo Tycoon has no official digital platform and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Microsoft, figure something out!)

EDIT: Zoo Tycoon 2 is now available for digital download on Amazon. While Amazon is a right ♥♥♥♥ and makes the basic process of giving them money a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hassle, and many people report some issues installing the game, AND many consider ZT2 to be the less good one in the series... the option is there.

While ZT2 is easier than MPE (one of the aspects of MPE I actually enjoyed was getting the picky animals to like their exhibits), it is a much more pleasant experience that makes the lack of any actual challenge worthwhile. And the campaigns feel like they actually had time and effort put into them. I highly recommend it over this game.

EDIT EDIT: Also, Planet Zoo is pretty cool and it's both actually on Steam and a lot more detailed and free-form than Zoo Tycoon. So that's a pretty good alternative too.

Turn all non-animal advertising to max. It should go up in a few months.

Advertise an animal (put as much money into it as you can), sell plushies of them in gift shops (make sure to hit "apply to all"), and, more importantly, train them to give shows. All you have to do is put them in the animal theater and leave them there. They give shows whenever people walk in. Don't take them out, ever, or you'll have to re-train them from scratch.

Make sure the animal theater is in a good spot if no one is attending the shows.


You cannot modify the terrain with different levels of water at the same time. - Fresh water is always at the same water level, but salt water can be placed inside any pits. Trying to add fresh water near a salt water pit or vice versa produces this message. Try making your brush smaller.
You cannot modify the terrain here as it may cause water spillage. - Most often this is caused by trying to put water in a landscape exhibit below the water level. Use dishes of water instead, or build above ground.
You cannot add water here, as some of the area is too shallow. - Make the salt water hole a bit deeper. Use the "snap" brush to make the terrain the same height as well.
You cannot add water here. - Usually linked to the above. Make the terrain flatter.
You cannot add that object here, otherwise the object cannot be interacted with. - When you place an object in an exhibit, the blue squares are where the animals go to interact with the object. You can't place anything else there.
You cannot modify the terrain here, as an object is in the way. - Get all your terraforming done before adding objects.
You cannot add the object here, as the area is occupied. - Gee ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ whiz. If you don't see anything, zoom in real close, there's probably a rock or a plant or something.

Move objects with collison out of the center of the pen and to the edges. Animals path very slowly around objects, causing them to starve. You can leave small rocks and such alone.

In addition, it seems like running the game in 2 or 3 speed causes animals to be unable to do anything useful. They'll just die. As soon as you see a "animal is hungry/thirsty/sick" popup, go back to 1 speed until they're taken care of.

Press G.

Zoo rating is tied directly to the highest admission fee you can get away with. The minimum fee is $100 and the maximum is $200. Each star is worth $20. If you have 30% rating, or one and a half stars, you can charge $130 admission.

Trash and animal poo both. If your exhibits are dirty, that affects the modifier as much as if there's trash laying around everywhere. Add extra zookeepers to problem exhibits, and hire more groundskeepers/place more trash cans.

Put them in another scenario and make them breed. When you beat the scenario, you'll unlock them in Freeform mode.


If you have any other questions, let me know.