I’m a chimp.. err.. I mean CHUMP, there, I admit it. For some strange reason I thought Zoo Keeper was a herding game similar to Herdy Gerdy, you’d get all the anmals of one type and herd them into the correct fields… but it’s not, Zoo Keeper is in fact a run of the mill puzzle game. In essence you have four modes of play, but they’re all pretty much the same gaming experience since you have to match 3 or more of the same animals to clear the levels regardless of the mode you choose; not that that’s a bad thing by any means since the overall premise is addictive, simple and fun.

Bringing Order to Chaos!
You take on the role of the hapless zookeeper, your boss is a narky little chap who calls you names and tells you to sort these animals out. The premise as mentioned is simple enough, you examine a grid of animal squares and by swapping two adjacent squares to line up three or more of the same kind of animal it clears them enabling whatever is above to drop down and so on. Simply touch the two adjacent animals with the stylus (or D-pad and A button) and they’ll switch places IF doing so will make a link of 3 or more. As well as this you have the usual ‘special’ blocks that will appear enabling various things such as removing all squares featuring one particular animal or highlighting where you can move if you’re stuck and the timer is ticking away.

Graphically speaking it’s a cute title with little to offer in the way of anything special. It’s bright and colourful and does indeed look ‘nice’ but let’s face it there’s little in the way of gob smacking here as the top screen features one specific blocky animal and the touch screen feature the gaming grid.

Sound within the game can get so irritating you’ll probably need to turn it off as it repeats over and over again in your head like some obscene merry go round tune. Don’t worry though as this will not affect the game at all… except to give you back your concentration.

Deaf gamers can play this game with no problems at all, given the above point regarding the music there’s really nothing to be missed in the way of aural charms. The speech of the ‘boss’ character appears in speech bubbles as do all the instructions, a tiny (and I mean tiny) gripe would be that some of the text appears to have been translated from Japanese in a rather whimsical manner ‘No More Move’ to end the level for example. This doesn’t take away from the game however, if anything it adds to its charm.

The female gamer angle with this title is the same as most, there’s nothing here to overtly annoy you as a female gamer, sure I guess it’s assumed you’re a male zoo keeper, but look at the bright side at least the boss isn’t hitting on you in the office.

Multiplayer mayhem!
Yes its one of those single cart downloadables so that’s some good news for those of you with not much gaming pennies and more than one DS in the house. You only need one copy of Zoo Keeper to play multiplayer on two DS consoles. Sadly this is where my one major gripe of the title comes in. Skill and Luck, when luck outweighs skill in a puzzle game it can lead to some annoying moments, why? Well simply because if winning the game against your opponent merely comes down to how the tiles appear, what’s the point of playing? No matter how good you or indeed they are the ‘random’ fall of the tiles can really ruin the game at points. Generally though there’s still a laugh to be had.

Overall though I really enjoyed Zoo Keeper, granted it isn’t a game you’d be thrilled with if you’d just spent £30 on it but it’s not a complete disaster either. If you’re a fan of the puzzler then you won’t be disappointed. Although it brings little of anything new to the genre, what it does do it does with addictive style.

If you want to try Zoo Keeper but don't have a DS handy just now you can play the flash version of Zoo Keeper. This is essentially the main mode and will better give you some idea of the gameplay. Though I should point out this is not as polished as the DS version and lacks the additional game modes! Have Fun.