#556 Zoo Keeper

Posted: 2nd January 2014 by Jeroen in Games
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297th played so far

Genre: Puzzle
Platform: Internet/DS
Year of Release: 2003
Developer: Success
Publisher: Ignition Entertainment

Some games, when you look at the initial graphics (loading up the game as we did in this case) just don’t give many clues on what theyre’ about. Zoo Keeper may sound somewhat straightforward at the start, but thinking about if afterwards, it isn’t clear what you actually do. There’s something with zoo animals, true, but what or why? Who knows.

Our Thoughts

At its course, the game is actually not that complicated. Really just a variant of Bejeweled, you match three or more animals in rows or columns, when they disappear (possibly creating further chains) increasing your score and ‘capturing’ them.

As a game (at least in infinite mode) it’s pretty addictive, simple to play but something you could keep playing for a while. To be honest, it offers little over the other variants, other than that the animals look cute and react nicely to what happens in the game.

Some of you may be looking at the title and have a little flash of memory. Back in the mid-00s this game went viral and appeared on a lot of websites meaning people such as myself found themselves compulsively playing this slightly odd little timewaster.

The more interesting part of the game are the story and quest modes. They set some nice goals, especially the latter. Rather than just capturing more and more animals (in order) you can specific and diverse requests – things like destroying without causing a chain several times in a row or getting ten vertical lines.

While, to be honest, I can’t say I understood much of what was going on (the Flash version was in Japanese only) just the graphics and responses were pretty nice to see. The animals react to what happens – not by much, but enough to make them a bit more… well, sort of alive.

Final Thoughts

The basics of the game are very familiar, but the additions in gameplay, with the quests and piece design, make it a lot more charming and worthwhile.