World of Zoo

System: Wii
Developer: Blue Fang Games
Publisher: THQ
Genre: Simulation
Players: 1-4

Surely you've heard the stories – an extremely intelligent individual visits his local animal exhibition and decides that the dangerous creatures penned within are talking to him, encouraging him to jump the fence and drop in for a visit. With World of Zoo, you too can get up-close and personal with various animals that'd normally view you as a meal with no danger to yourself or the general public. Of course you're their designated keeper rather than a paying customer of the zoo, but the principle is more or less the same.

Starting off as a rookie animal keeper, you're given the choice from a fair amount of animals to take care of. Your first choice will be given to you for free – you can start with anything from lions & tigers to bears (obligatory 'oh my' goes here), giraffes, penguins, even koalas and small monkeys (but none of the great apes... at least so far as I've played). Naturally I went with the small monkeys, and there's even more choice in which species you want to populate your exhibits with (capuchin, squirrel monkeys, patas monkeys... the list goes on). The game claims there's over 90 different species to interact with – while I haven't counted, there's certainly a large number available.


But wait, there's more customisation (and a free set of steak knives [/demtel]) – you can even change the animals themselves. Almost every feature can be tweaked in some way, whether it's renaming your animal, giving them altered facial features, or making them a different colour. Body shapes can also be edited, as well as behavioural traits – you can even write a backstory for each animal if you desire. Some options aren't available from the beginning – these are unlocked either as you progress through the keeper ranks, or are found as National Geographic cards through the game.

The game is played from a first-person view – the Nunchuk isn't in use, as all the controls are operated by the Wii-mote with the gameplay happening from a fixed position. As there's no moving around, moving the Wii-mote to the side of the screen pans the view to various parts of the exhibit. The A button is for using commands and the B button zooms in on the currently viewed area, with A+B together throwing items instead of dropping them, and the + pad acting as camera tracking for your animals. The – button opens up the Tools menu, from which toys and food can also be accessed. You can even save memorable moments in your game by using the camera, however there's a ten photo limit each time you enter an exhibit.


The main objective of World of Zoo is to earn promotions, and work your way up the ranks until you're overlord of the world zoo. To do this, you'll have to earn your animals' trust, which is done in various ways: firstly by simply playing games with them and keeping them entertained. At times the animals will stop and look at you and a thought bubble will appear with their current need/want – fulfilling this need is as simple as grabbing the object from the thought bubble and presenting it to them. As the animals get happier, the Heart Point gauge in the upper left corner of the screen will fill up – hovering over the gauge will show you how close you are to your next promotion. As you're promoted, more toys, food and tools will become available including the Playset Builder; these playsets cost Star Tokens (the in-game currency) to build, but allow you to customise the exhibit for your animals. Various treasures are scattered throughout the exhibits too – tapping on a sparkling area of the enclosure will usually command an animal to search there, although I found it to be hit-and-miss as to whether the animal would actually start to search. Mostly all they'll find will be some rubbish (empty cans or lolly wrappers), but occasionally they'll find a diamond ring or someone's wallet. I'm not sure whether these prizes actually unlock anything or provide any extra bonuses though.

Keeping animals healthy and well fed will also help to increase your Heart Points – as you rise through the ranks you'll unlock the Medical Scanner, which can automatically diagnose and cure any ailments your animals have. You'll also have to keep the animals groomed with the brush or the hose, and remove any waste they produce with the Poop-Vac (for some reason the game even keeps track of how much you remove in the 'fun' stats – what a high-score competition that would've made for the Podium). Occasionally an animal will move up close to the screen with a yellow circle emanating from it – this usually means the animal wants attention, and clicking on it will set the game into a pseudo-cutscene in which you interact more directly with it. Depending on where you position the pointer, the animal will react differently (such as a monkey bowing its head to be scratched behind the ears, or breaking into simian laughter if you tickle its belly), which shows that Blue Fang has put some thought into every aspect of the game.


Promotions also unlock Challenges – completely optional mini-games focused on grooming or healing your animals, or sending them on a search for treasure – each within a time limit. As there's no pressure to play these to further your game progress, they were a nice deviation from the main gameplay rather than an inconvenience, although they're not doing anything dramatically different from playing normally. It's the same three Challenges for each exhibit though; something tailored to each specific enclosure would've made things more interesting. A second, third or fourth player can also join in if you want to get the task done quickly and score more points. Star Tokens and Heart Points can also be earned in these Challenges, so there's some benefit to playing them if you're short of funds or using every avenue available for your next promotion.

If you choose to leave your starting exhibit and begin looking after a different one, it'll cost you 50 Star Tokens to unlock. These coins are reasonably easy to earn in the course of caring for your animals, so it simply means spending more time with them and making sure they're happy. Once you start a new exhibit, the fun and trust-gaining exercises start all over again.


Alternatively, you can also enter the exhibit nursery and play with some baby animals instead. This works in much the same way as the regular exhibit – choose a baby animal to interact with and let the fun begin – although there's a few different items to test out, such as hand-feeding your animals with a bottle. Unlike the main exhibits, the nursery design is basically the same for every animal type, with a few themed alterations such as sandy floors for the savannah animals or slippery ice slides for the junior penguins. It also appears to be much easier to gain an animal's trust and affection in the nursery, and the baby animal can then be released into the main exhibit; I noticed this seemed to speed up the process of earning promotions, so it's worth spending some time in this area of the zoo as well.

Now, to the graphics. World of Zoo doesn't attempt to go for photo-realism when it comes to this aspect of the game, instead opting for a cel-shaded look akin to The Wind Waker. While this makes for a simpler appearance for the animals, they're still accurate to what you'd find in their real-life counterparts, and it gives the game a lighter, more enjoyable feel than what more realistic textures and animals would. The sound effects used are superb, particularly the animal cries (which is where it really counts). There's some good background music in World of Zoo as well; as well as a lively track for the menu screens each exhibit has a structure with a speaker located somewhere, and tapping on this will allow you to toggle between two different background musics or turn it off completely.

Depending on how diligent you are with your animal care, it can be fairly easy to tally up the Star Tokens to earn new exhibits, however it's not easy to earn the highest rank for each, so you'll be there for a while if you want to completely rise through the ranks and unlock all of the items and tools. Because of the amount of customisation there's a multitude of animals to create and interact with, and there's three save files so you can start all over again or let a friend or family member have a go. It wasn't without its problems though – the cursor can be sluggish and inaccurate at times, and treasure-hunting can be a pain, as mentioned earlier. On one occasion a monkey managed to get itself stuck in a corner with no way to get out (short of exiting the exhibit altogether), however this may have been a one-off case.


Score: 7/10 "Good Buy"

World of Zoo started off slowly for me, but after a while it became quite enjoyable. There's a vast amount of customisation available in the game, and it can be entertaining in just simply sitting back for a few minutes and watching the animals playing on their own – almost the entire game (apart from the challenges) exudes a no-pressure approach that's very appealing.

It feels like Blue Fang has put a lot of effort into developing World of Zoo, and their attention to detail really brings the animals to life – particularly some of their reactions to the hose. Although it may not be accurate to their real-life incarnations (then again, who knows what they get up to when we're not looking), keep an eye out for the sleepwalking koalas.

If you're looking to try out the animal creator feature of the game, check out the official site for a PC demo.