[ElementK]

Introduction - Zoo Keeper originally started out as a flash game in the style of games like Bejeweled. The idea of the game is to swap two tiles within a large grid, creating a horizontal or vertical line, of 3 or more tiles. It's an addictive style of puzzler, and perhaps revolves more around the speed and fast eye of the player, rather than skill and strategy of games like Tetris Attack. It's still a very fun type of puzzle game to play, and Zoo Keeper on the DS is probably one of the best examples I've seen of how to make one.

Gameplay - Within Zoo Keeper there are 5 game modes and 3 difficulty levels (with a 4th unlockable one) to play these modes in. Normal mode is the equivalent of the original flash game, you must clear a "quota" of each type of animal before you can level up, with the game ending once you reach a certain level. The different difficulty levels affect how many points are awarded as bonuses, and also how quickly the timer falls, giving you more or less time to act. It's a fun mode although I personally rank it below the next two.

Tokoton 100 is the endurance mode of sorts, to level up you must clear 100 of an animal, however the counters of the others never reset, so it's possible to level up many times in quick succession, which can speed up the timer quite quickly if you're not careful. I enjoy this mode a lot, as you progress it gets harder to survive, and in the end it's down to your skill as a player which defines your score, and if you can get into the zone an hour can pass by in one game easily.

Time Attack is fairly self-explanatory, you have 6 minutes to get as many points as you can, which is acheived simply by levelling up as many times as you can manage. I enjoy this mode as much as I do Tokoton 100, although for other reasons entirely. It's a very intense mode, and having 6 minutes is nice because it gives you the time to really get into your rhythm without dragging on for too long. A nice little touch within the game is that it will keep track of what position on the leaderboard you are at any point, and in Time Attack watching it count up from 10 to 1 can be a very good motivation to get that high score.

Quest mode is a series of 10 small tests given to you by the head zoo keeper, and based on your performance in each he will give or take away points. I think this mode had a lot of potential, and some of the "ability tests" given are definitely just that, a good test of your abilities. However 2 or 3 of them just have a little too much luck involved to be a true test of ability, and ultimately your high score will come through being lucky in the tests where it needs it most. It doesn't detract much from the game much though, as it does add some variety.

Finally there is 2P mode, which handily only requires one DS card between the two systems. Although I haven't played it myself, the general idea is that the better moves you pull off on your screen, the more time you remove from your opponents timer, and the first to run out of time loses. I imagine it would be quite a frenetic mode, especially between two experienced players.

The other important issue here is the control. Zoo Keeper is one of only a couple of DS games that can be played entirely with the stylus, and it handles it perfectly. As long as your stylus is calibrated properly, you'll never have any problems touching the animals you mean to touch, and the game reacts as quickly as you can play, it's very smooth.

Story - Really the story has no bearing on the final score, but Success managed to squeeze a simple one in there anyway. The premise is this: The head zoo keeper has been so mean to the animals in his zoo, they've decided to riot, and it's been left up to you to clear up his mess by clearing up the animals within the game. If you complete Normal mode, you'll actually get a bit of back story that explains why the head zoo keeper is how he is, and it's a nice touch considering how pointless the story is in the end.

Graphics/Sound - Graphically, the game is vibrant, full of bright colours, and it needs to be. Each animal head is easy to tell apart from the others, and it makes finding lines of 3 come down to your ability to just look at the screen. Everything is very sharp too and the animals are pretty cute, especially the angry faces. On the other hand, the sound is a bit average really. It's not something I notice a lot while playing because I'm focused on what I'm doing, but if you take the time to listen to it, it really isn't much to listen to, some very basic tunes that won't stick in your head and generally are more likely to make you turn off the music (which you can do within the options, separate from SFX). It's functional, at best.

Replayability - This is a pretty ambiguous area to review, as it almost certainly changes from person to person. As for "completing" the game, I saw the credits on the day I got it, but that's not the point at all. All 4 of the main modes have scoreboards, and each offers a decent amount of replayability, some more than others, which will come down to personal opinion. I'll find myself playing Time Attack and Tokoton 100 for a long time to come though. If you can find people to compete for scores with, or play 2P against, you'll certainly get a lot of action out of the game, otherwise you may struggle to find a reason to play after a while.

Final Recommendation - If you love Bejeweled, or any one of the many clones, you'll love this, and it'll give you new modes to play with which I imagine are fairly unique to the game. If you're unsure if the game is for you, or wondering why you should spend upwards of $40 on it, try and find the flash game online somewhere for a taster, but know that this DS game is far better. From person to person this game could get any score from 1/10 to 10/10, but for me, it's a 9. I'd actually give it an 8.5 if I could, but I feel it should be rounded up, not down. The only things that let this game down are aspects of Quest mode, and the music, and both of those aren't major issues to me. This game is both a great example of how the "gimmicks" of the DS can be put to good use, and how to make a good puzzler, so an 8 is what I give it.

8/10
Nice! Addictive! YAYHAKIHAKI!