"World of Zoo" is an ancient handheld (Nintendo DS) game from 2009. It's a whopping 15 years old at the time of this review. The game lacks support for the typical features of modern gaming PCs, hasn't been modernised or updated to run smoothly on contemporary machines. The game looks and feels dated. Despite this lack of modernisation, it carries a pretty high price tag for such an old game. This seems to have be lingering on Steam with an inflated price to try profit from abandonware.
Expectations should be very low for Nintendo DS games on Steam, and "World of Zoo" is proof of that theorem. It's not a bad idea for a game but could have been implemented better. This is a game for children, somewhere between a glorified Tamagochi and a Fischer-Price activity set, with a Zoology theme. You run a zoo, you have various animals in the zoo and you take on the role of zookeeper, looking after the animals.
What this entails in terms of gameplay is thoroughly underwhelming as you are stationary in a low poly enclosure with low poly animals that you interact with by using the Nintendo DS stylus to tap away at your screen, achieving mundane tasks such as grooming, feeding and otherwise interacting with the animal in the enclosure, like a Tamagochi on steroids.
From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
The game features lazy low-polygon "retro" assets, making this look like a barely functional 3D game from the 1990s. It's unclear why the developers weren't able to arrange high quality, high polygon count contemporary assets for the game, and also irrelevant... what matters is that this looks bad as a result of their decisions, a compromise PC gamers shouldn't have to put up with.
The controls can't be customised because the game has such a dumbed down, simplified interface that it's just point and click stuff like a browser/Flash game. The fact that the interface is this dumbed down might be seen as a problem in itself, however... this is a fairly shallow experience if you're the kind of gamer that likes to play games with deep, rich control schemes and interaction. You'll get none of that here.
Because this is designed for handheld/portable gaming appliances, it carries a number of deliberate design deficiencies. Compromises were made to cater to the low power handheld gaming appliances that the game was designed for. These are unfortunate compromises and limitations that PC gamers shouldn't be forced to accept, but it's evident that PC was a second thought for the mobile game developers. The game is deficient as a result of these choices, and would have been so much better without the handicaps that designing games for low power handhelds forces upon a game. While this might run well on a Steam Deck, we must remember the vast majority of gamers here are gaming on PC.
These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.
The game never really caught on with the millions of gamers on Steam, with a very low peak player count close to launch, and then just a handful of players launching this game every couple of days. This is undoubtedly caused by factors such as those raised in this review. It's always helpful with buying decisions to consider how popular and successful the product is, and unfortunately while this did accumulate a few participation trophy reviews, overall, people just aren't using it.
So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam?
"World of Zoo" is relatively expensive for an abandonware nostalgia gouge, at $15 USD, and it's not worth it. The game is just too old, hasn't been modernised. And as the old saying goes, you can't go home again. For comparison, the $15 asking price for this game could get you games like "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt", "Disco Elysium" or "Doom Eternal". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this.
If you want a decent Zoo game, while Frontier are known to be an unethical developer, their Planet Zoo game is best of breed and should be considered.
