Game Classification

The US government starts a competition between zoological parks to win a grant of one million dollars, prompting the park manager Zulu to inspect her establishment, making all kinds of reforms and improvements to the attractions.

Zulu's Zoo is a hidden object game with a zoological theme. As Zulu, the objective is to manage a park by cleaning cages, feeding animals and performing other similar tasks. The park's locations are shown as mostly static scenes, accessed through an overhead map. The goal of each location is displayed at the wooden bottom interface, alongside a star-shaped hint button and the list of remaining things to be found.

Most of the time, the goal is to find and click on all the items listed at the bottom. Some locations have other gameplay variations, where the objective is to feed all the captive animals by dragging and dropping the appropriate food icons on them. In some instances, the screen is all blurry with the exception of a mouse-controlled camera viewfinder, and the goal is snap to a number of pictures of the animals listed at the bottom. In other scenes, the objective is to clean an area by dragging and dropping all the junk inside a trash bin, or by using a bug spray to kill all pests. The hint button costs one star per use, and highlights the position of one of the required items. After completing each screen, a trivia item about animals is displayed and the player receives a number of stars based on how fast the scene was completed and the quantity of hints used.

Besides the required animals and objects, each scenario has stars to be collected as well. They have two purposes, serving as the help system by accumulating uses for the hint button, and giving access to the test that will increase Zulu's rank and give access to new locations. The tests cost a certain number of stars, and are association tasks where the player must connect animals to their correct habitat, food type and so on. Stars can also be received after completing one of the mini-games, gradually available through the map screen. They are common implementations of classic games, like concentration with matching animal pictures, a guessing game where the player must click on the name of the correct animal by analyzing portions of its picture and a conveyor belt puzzle where food has to be redirected on tracks towards the correct animal. [source:mobygames]

Distribution : Retail - Commercial
Platform(s) : Macintosh - PC (Windows)

Links

• http://www.mobygames.com/game/zulus-zoo/