Zoo Keeper Review

A word of warning. If falling blocks keep you awake at night after a prolonged session on Tetris, you might want to steer well clear of Zoo Keeper. A few hours of this maddeningly addictive puzzle game will disrupt your sleep patterns for weeks. You’ll toss and turn as dancing hippos cavort across the back of your eyelids and angry pandas fix you with disapproving glares. You’ll desperately shuffle and swap animals in your mind but those neat and tidy lines will forever elude you. Many restless hours later, only one course of action will be able to ease your troubled mind: yes, you guessed it. More Zoo Keeper.

It’s that kind of game. Perfect for both quick five-minute sessions and hour-long marathons, you’ll find Zoo Keeper slots neatly into whatever spare time you have. Before you know it, the other things that go to make up your life – school, work, food, family members – exist only to fill the gaps between Zoo Keeper sessions. Basic in appearance, ridiculously simple in concept, it’s easily the most addictive title available so far for the Nintendo DS and, with not a hint of exaggeration, may well be the best handheld puzzle game since Tetris itself.

The concept takes seconds to grasp. Animals are displayed randomly arranged in a grid pattern. By swapping two adjacent animals using the stylus, a row of three or more of the same species can be formed, which will then disappear. Blocks from above fall down to fill the vacated space, potentially forming more lines of three. Once a certain quota of each type of animal has been captured on a given screen, the board is cleared and the process starts again. As you play, a time limit ticks down with ever-increasing speed and when it runs out, the game is over.

And, well, that’s it. All four of the game’s modes revolve around the same basic concept. Whereas Normal mode challenges you to clear a small number of each type of animal, increasing as each board is cleared, the bizarrely-named Tokoton 100 mode needs you to capture a hundred of each type and lasts correspondingly longer. Time Attack, meanwhile, imposes a strict time limit of six minutes and challenges you to score as much as possible within that period. Only Quest mode, where a black-hearted, malevolent zoo keeper challenges you to complete a variety of increasingly bizarre tasks, offers any real variety.

Yet it doesn’t matter. The basic concept, like the falling blocks of Tetris, is sufficient to propel the game forward on its own terms. Whether you’re frantically scouring the screen for the one remaining move that will clear the whole board, or darting around frantically shoving animals left and right in a bid to extend your combo, it’s a game that demands intense concentration as well as both luck and skill. The game, while random, is scrupulously fair: as soon as a situation occurs where no moves can be made, it wipes the screen and starts again, giving you a nice score bonus into the bargain. This means that if you do happen to find yourself well and truly stuck, it’s entirely your own fault. There’s always something that can be done – if you haven’t spotted it, you only have yourself to blame.

Although Zoo Keeper is available for many platforms – including a widely-known free Flash version – it’s this DS version that is definitive. With a stylus and a touch-screen, Zoo Keeper becomes entirely intuitive. Animals can be moved around at speed and the gap between eyeball, brain and stylus becomes insignificant. It’s possible to jump from one side of the screen to another instantly, and extended combos become possible by moving animals around while other chains are still in freefall. After playing the DS version, you’ll find every other version of Zoo Keeper – and, by extension, most other puzzle games – slow and cumbersome by comparison.

It’s only the game’s inherent randomness that ultimately lets it down. Although the game always ensures that you’re left with at least one move to make, there’s a big difference between a board that has one or two possible moves, and a board that offers lots of moves and plenty of chaining potential. Each type is as likely to appear as the other, and a board that offers a succession of single moves can lead to low scores and your time running out extremely quickly. This extends to a couple of the game’s modes, too. Quest mode, which poses challenges like “get chains of four or more animals” or “catch more giraffes than pandas” can be frustratingly random, particularly as a single unlucky performance can wipe out seventy percent of your score in one fell swoop. And the two-player wireless mode, although great in concept, is hobbled from the start: each player starts with a different board, so games inevitably depend on luck and who has the best layout rather than individual skill.

Still, don’t let Zoo Keeper’s simplicity fool you. This game, despite its basic presentation and easy-to-grasp concept, is a minor classic. Those who complain that such a basic game can’t be worth thirty pounds are missing the point: Zoo Keeper will exert a fearsome grip on your attention and, even played in short bursts, will ultimately rack up a lot more playtime than flashier, more linear titles. In that sense it’s worth every penny of the admittedly high asking price. It’s perfectly suited to the strengths of the DS, its simplicity has a certain stylish charm, and, yes, it’s so addictive it might well keep you awake at night. Of all the DS launch titles, this may well be the one you find yourself coming back to time and again.