Zoo Keeper For iOS: Fantastic Free Fun For All [Review]

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Animal magic.
Animal magic.

Anyone with fond memories of playing Zoo Keeper on a Nintendo DS a few years ago probably doesn’t need to read any further. Just go get it for iOS now, and have fun.

If you missed out on Zoo Keeper first time round, or if you’ve simply never encountered it, allow me to enlighten you: this is fantastic fast-paced color-matching puzzle fun. And for the time being, it’s free.

At heart, Zoo Keeper is really simple. From a grid of brightly colored animal faces, your task is to match up lines of three or more, simply by swapping adjacent pairs.

As you line ’em up, so they drop off the screen and earn you points. New animals arrive from the top to fill the gaps, and so things go on.

You’re tapping against the clock, so the faster you spot potential lines and groups, the better. Things speed up naturally, because you don’t have to wait for one group to vanish before you can line up the next one. It all comes down to how keen your eyes are and how fast you can tap.

The pace picks up as you go to higher levels. There’s a handy “binoculars” mode for when you’re really stuck, but use it with care – you only have so many uses of this helpful cheat.

A game with a sense of humor

This is a faithful re-creation of the original game, complete with the delightful graphics and retro-style bleepy music. The animals have a series of expressions: I love the grumpy look you get from one species if it feels it’s need neglected, and the wide-eyed surprise on all their faces when you complete a level and they all drop out of sight.

Its simplicity is its strength. Like all the best games, it takes a very short time to learn the rules, but many fun plays to master the art of getting a high score.

With three modes – normal, online, and tokoton (in which you collect 100 animals to get to the next level) there’s plenty of variety here, although not the Quest mode found on the DS version.

Let’s not be overly fussy, though. This excellent game is on offer right now for free, and won’t hassle you with adverts or in-app purchases or anything else. What a bargain. Grab it for nothing while you can.

Source: App Store

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