Well, ahoy there fella. It appears ye caught me red handed playin’ this new app called Dream Zoo. Ye see, I’ve always loved animals – giraffes, lions, and those fat elephants. Aye, they’ve always had a special place in me heart. This Dream Zoo gives me that fantasy by letting this old buccaneer manage this here zoo – me fantasy zoo. Why don’t ye give it a try?
Back in October of last year, Zynga launched its highly anticipated animal and zoo management and tycooning simulation app called Dream Zoo for both the Android and iOS operating systems. Like most of what Zynga churns out, Dream Zoo was and still is a hit. This is mainly because while the game is in a genre that has a lot of competition, its similarity to them is limited to the surface. If you delve deeper, you will find that Dream Zoo has a lot more to offer than typical games in the same genre like Tap Zoo, Zoo Story, and Safari Zoo.
The Basics
Like every other app within the genre, Dream Zoo, at its core, gives you the user a pair of animals. Your mission is to get those two (male and female) to do the hanky panky at night when the zoo closes in order to produce a new baby animal.
During the course of this entire process, you will be tasked to ensure that each of these animals get the proper care they deserve and require. Yes, that is the gist and it is all too familiar. However, that is exactly where the buck stops in terms of similarities with other games in the genre. From there, Dream Zoo points you to options that you may have never encountered in such a game or have rarely experienced.
Money Matters
Most zoo tycoon and management apps often lack the whole economic motivational side of things. In most of them, your main motivation is just to care for and breed more animals and make the zoo visitors happy. The complexities like Zoo economy are thrown out the door. In Dream Zoo, Zynga gives you the option to improve you zoo through optimizing it in order to earn more money – money that you can use to purchase more animals to display, produce better breeds, and literally improve your zoo even further. Each habitat (where your animals are housed) will produce more revenue if it attracts more people. So, aside from displaying top of the line animals, you can actually encourage its appeal by adding more value to it through décor and other add-ons that can improve it visually.
Advanced Breeding
Breeding animals is an art in Dream Zoo. In most games, breeding is just a simple means to an end. You need to breed new animals in order to populate your zoo or replace the animals that might just retire out of old age. In Dream Zoo, you are given the ability to improve on your breeds, which will then increase the appeal and revenue of your zoo. For example, say you have a lion and you find a lioness with the same rating (for this example, let’s say the rating is “common”).
The cub produced from their getting jiggy with it will have a rating of “rare” by default. That means that you have already produced a better breed. Now, if you get a “rare” partner for that rare cub when he is of age, they will produce an offspring with an even higher rating. And the process goes on until you have the best of breeds. Display that breed in the habitat and watch your zoo’s success soar.
Unfortunately, finding a mate isn’t that easy. You can either buy it from a shop (using real money, of course) or you can go on safaris to search and capture that rare or rarer mate. Your success on capturing an animal, getting more gold, or finding some treasure will depend on luck.
Conclusion
Dream Zoo is a solid zoo management and tycoon app. It has solid graphics, a great soundtrack, and fresh multidimensional gameplay, allowing for a more solid simulation experience.
