The zookeeper is going on holiday for two weeks and has left me – a fool with no idea how to manage a monkey enclosure let alone run an entire zoo – in complete charge of the entire operation! Hang on a minute: A zoo in Australia wants me to take some rabbits off their hands… what can possibly go wrong here?!
Thus begins the beta version of Let’s Build a Zoo, an upcoming zoo management/sim game from developer Springloaded and hot indie publisher No More Robots.
Support this awesome writer — 100% goes directly to them!
Buy me a coffee
There’s a lot to love about this game already, with the promise of much more to come. A two-week run in the beta equates to about an hour or two of play, depending on how much messing around you do. I did a lot of exploring through menus and submenus – many options are not available in the beta, but certainly look exciting. It’s enough to get your initial zoo up and running, expand your territory a bit, import and trade various animals, as well as run some questionably legal DNA experiments to create whole new breeds of creature. Then give them a trampoline to excitedly bounce on!
RELATED: E3 2021: ‘Starfield’ Launches Exclusively for Xbox in 2022
It also ticks the boxes with classic “Theme Park” style management sim tropes such as messing around with the ingredients of the food and drinks available in the snack bars to maximise profit/addictiveness. Don’t forget to build bins or the litter will build up, and remember the visitors also need a bathroom.
Let’s Build a Zoo is easy to get to grips with, but goes as in-depth as you want to go with lots of stats and figures to handle. You are aided by staff who give hints at what to do next and which elements need attention, along with various goals to aim for that bring in extra cash. My newly acquired rabbits were soon happily frolicking in their grassy enclosure, kept happy with plenty of water to drink and toys to keep them happy. It wasn’t long before baby rabbits were on their way, and I was able to trade one for some capybara and on I went. Soon, I was buying more land to build on and creating a rabbit/hippo hybrid. A hippo-sized rabbit. Imagine that…
It was a beta build so, sure, there were bugs and, as mentioned, a lot of the game wasn’t available, however, I’m certain even more gameplay elements will be added (I’d love the ability to pause the game whilst still being able to plan things in game, please!). Just the stuff in there now could keep you going for a while. The gene splicing alone looks like it could be a serious time sink, along with all the other aspects of the zoo that require research to unlock.
Let’s Build a Zoo is already a very more-ish sim game and certainly one to keep an eye on. For future updates, be sure to follow the developer on Twitter @SpringloadedDev and check out the Steam page here.
RELATED: E3 2021: ‘The Outer Worlds 2’ Confirmed
