Let's Build a Zoo (2021)

• Year played: 2023
• Platform: PC
• Playtime: 4 hours
• Overall rating: 5.5 / 10

This game sucked me in right away, but then sadly dropped off pretty quickly. It's fun to create your first few animal pens, filling them up and breeding to get new animals, and decorating them with scenery and decor.

But then you realize that's the entire game loop, and nothing really changes as you get further - the only difference is it gets hectic and cluttered extremely quickly as your animals breed up a storm and start overflowing their pens. I also found it difficult to keep up with my animals' needs for water, toys, and food since the caretaker pathing is constantly getting blocked for seemingly no reason, leaving your animals with empty food bowls and no access to their toys.

I think this game could have been good with a UI overhaul making it easier to manage your hundreds of animals, but as it is, everything you try to do is just too many steps and buried in too many nested menus. Bummer.

3 stars - I got immediately absorbed by this game. It's really fun, but it is also imbalanced and can be frustrating. There are so many interesting elements but the execution is lacking. Money quickly becomes a non-issue and you can just start doing whatever. The challenge is mostly in waiting until you unlock more animals and solving annoying repetitive issues like having to sell tons of animals every day. It's sad because it is otherwise very charming and humorous! Building the zoo is really cool. I wish the sandbox mode was more free.

I played the game on Switch and it is not made for this system at all. The text is very small. It starts lagging once your zoo gets bigger. You should probably get the PC version.