5.9 KiB
| title | date | score | game_release_year | howlongtobeat_id | howlongtobeat_hrs | game_name | game_developer | game_genre | tags | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zoo Keeper a.k.a. Animal Bejeweled | 2023-05-23T13:30:00+02:00 | 2 | 2004 | 11590 | 5.3 | Zoo Keeper | Success | Puzzle |
|
The rise and fall of web-based Flash games netted us a permanent addiction to tile-matching games ever since PopCap's Bejeweled in 2001 and its innumerable subtle and not so subtle ripoffs. Zoo Keeper is one of the latter ones, initially also a Flash game built by the Japanese Robot Communications, which can still be played in your favorite browser thanks to Archive.org's Flash-emulator. Success Corporation fleshed out the concept and released it for Nintendo DS, which was later ported under the title Zookeeper DX for smartphones.
The question is: what can a Bejeweled clone offer besides another skin?
Not much, it turns out.
The game plays (almost) exactly like Bejeweled does: match three or more tiles horizontally or vertically in a grid full of randomly placed cartoony animal heads, and they disappear, possibly creating a chain while a column or row drops and forms another set. A timer in the form of a reverse progress bar is supposed to keep things interesting, while certain modes spice things up a bit by having you match certain animals while avoiding others before moving on to the next challenge.
The biggest difference between Zoo Keeper and its gemstoney counterpart is the ability to make a move while the previous move is still resolving, opening op a very small window of opportunity to form more chains before the animation completes and the action resolves. This can be difficult to pull of but is, admittedly, satisfying, even though the excitement quickly wears off a moment later when the staring continues trying to quickly locate two crocodiles and a third one close by. As you make your way through "Zoo Keeper" mode, a new animal type appears after about an hour of play: the bunny. I thought it was something special, but to my disappointment, I found out it's just another combo to be made.
Zoo Keeper comes with five different modes: Zoo Keeper mode (capture a set number of animals to complete a level), Tokoton (a sort of unlimited mode; capture 100 animals per level), Quest (ten different assignments that get scored), Time Attack (6 minutes), and 2P Battle. The difficulty can be ramped up to hard or toned down to easy in the options menu, but other than that, there's little variation. Tokoton is just Zoo Keeper mode with a different quota and Quest mode is finished in 15 minutes---and comes with laughably bad English translations as your boss tells you what to do or grades your performance.
In order to properly rate a game such as this one, we have to go back in time and imagine it's December 2004: the Nintendo DS has just been released and Zoo Keeper was a launch game in Japan, along Feel the Magic, Mr. Driller, Pokémon Dash, Polarium, and WarioWare Touched. This means only Polarium was a direct puzzle competitor, but being a far more brainy typical for Japanese-like puzzlers, while Zoo Keeper can certainly be considered addictive but braindead. If you loved wasting time in the browser sliding jewels back and forth, you certainly would have loved carrying a Nintendo DS loaded with Zoo Keeper to do exactly the same on the go.
Unfortunately, twenty years later, the rather simplistic gameplay hasn't aged particularly well. After two hours, I was bored to death. But then again, I never was that big of a fan of Flash-based time wasters in the first place. Still, Candy Crush and the like prove that nowadays there's still a huge market for these kinds of games, although they come fully equipped with bells and whistles. That same Polygon article discusses the fine lines between straight clones and adding extra layers of gameplay mechanics, and although they mention Puzzle Quest which introduced RPG elements, Zoo Keeper seems to be forgotten---perhaps with good reason.
When it comes to leveraging the brand new handheld's unique capabilities, Zoo Keeper doesn't particularly stand out either, although that can be expected from a launch title where things haven't been figured out yet. Yes, you can slide animals up and down with your stylus---but the button control scheme works just as well, if not better. The top screen is used to display the high score, animal quota depending on the game mode, and a cute image of the current animal that nets bonus points. Perhaps the most compelling reason to buy Zoo Keeper back in the day was the impressive "Download Play" feature: you only need one cartridge to play the 2P Battle mode. I also remember it costing $20 instead of the full $40 a month or so after its initial release. A used copy nowadays is pretty cheap, even including the box this won't go beyond $10.
If you're still in the market for a simple Bejeweled-like experience with cute animal heads and want to waste time without thinking too much, then by all means give Zoo Keeper a try. If you'd rather install a free version on your phone that introduces the concept of "battles", try the modern iteration Zoo Keeper Battle instead, available on both iOS and Android. As for Bejeweled itself, of course multiple versions (Bejeweled 3; 2011, Bejeweled Twist; 2009) eventually made it to the Nintendo DS, but much later than Zoo Keeper.
Happy tile matching!