Zooo takes a very common type of puzzle game you’ve likely played variations many times on calculators, cell phones, or the internet and only makes two major adjustments to it.
The basic gameplay is rather simple: you have a 2D grid of objects, in this case animal heads, and you must swap adjacent “tiles” to form rows or columns of three or more. Zooo adds two major restrictions to this common game. The first is that you cannot freely swap tiles around. If a specific swap you make doesn’t end up in a match of three or more, the tiles return to their original positions; if there are currently no matches you can make, then the boards will reset to give you a new set of animals to work with. The second is that in several of the game modes, the game actually keeps track of which animals you’ve matched up.
In the default Zooo game mode, you must “capture” a specific number of each animal in the time allotted to clear a stage. As you make matches, whether they bring you closer to your goal or not, you will receive extra time. If you find yourself unable to find where you can make a match, you are allotted three “binoculars”. Using these special items will cause the game to briefly highlight where you can make some matches.
