Player Comments on The Emperor's Zoo

I liked this game! It's a decent way to pass the time and I thought the writing was strong, although I feel like there could have been a lot more that the author could have done with the premise.

In this game, you play as a new employee who just got hired at the Emperor's exotic zoo.

In the start, the author characterizes the emperor's personality well and we get to know what kind of guy he is. That being said, I was a little bummed when it turns out we never get to meet with the emperor, but hey, it's ok because everything else made up for it.

The game is clearly designed to where you have to play as the animal-catcher in order for the plot to progress in a meaningful way; there is an illusion of choice, with multiple choices of careers seemingly offered but only one that actually matters.

In situations like these, it's easy to frustrate the reader because the pages can get long sometimes and they essentially have to read material that isn't relevant, but Ogre11, being a good writer, manages to sidestep this potential problem by making all the other careers funny as hell!

I enjoyed the little accounting quiz with some ridiculous choices, and I would choose them just to rile the lady up. In that manner, the amount of truncated branches is astonishing, Ogre put in a ton of effort to give you a bunch of options that only lead to humor, so mad respect for that. In these truncated branches, you have mini "endings", but I don't really count them as endings because as far as I'm concerned, you have to become an exotic animal catcher in order for the endings to truly feel earned.

Once you click the "search for new animals" choice, the introduction/background is over and the story game is officially underway. Ogre set this up as an open world where you have multiple locations that will need to visit multiple times in order to collect various things. Essentially, you move around the open world, talking to people, picking up sticks, grass in a variety of different biomes.

I thought Ogre did a decent job of fleshing out the various biomes with engaging descriptors and adding little mini areas so that you really feel like you're out there exploring. He didn't over do it on the description, which is good because otherwise I might have clicked off.

The game is rather challenging to beat because of the lack of direction and the open world format. But that's a plus because that's exactly what're you expecting going into this. You will go from place to place, remember things and then come back and slowly complete the steps necessary to take you to a place you couldn't go before.

Ogre incorporates a little riddle in the section where you mediate a dispute between 2 tribal leaders, and I enjoyed that.

There's a certain amount of symmetry and logical consistency in that you collect 3 types of waters from 3 different places(oasis water, mountain water, and tap water), while avoiding dying in the more inhospitable biomes. You need to combine these 3 waters to form a new healing water, which I thought was a nice touch! I liked the potion-making aspect, that was fun. The healing water allows you to survive the swampy area of the jungle biome, which is the way you need to go if you want to win. That was a really nice touch!

I did take issue with the trickiest part of the game and that's when you have to drop the sticks in order to calm the witch doctor in the mountains and get the mountain water. You can't progress if you have sticks in your inventory and the story didn't really give me a reasonable explanation as to why this was the case, so that was frustrating. I kept on dying for a while until I somehow got lucky and made it through. You also have to give the witch doctor a gift of the sand, either yellow or red. Again, I have mixed feelings about it, on one hand I'm glad that the items came in use and weren't just cosmetic, because I like the idea of items building on each other to get you further along the path, but I wish there was a logical explanation for this. Like when you give the woman water and she, in exchange, gives you sand, that makes sense since a woman in a desert would appreciate water! But the exchange with the witch-doctor felt intentionally confusing.

In games like this, where the story is supposed to present you with a challenge to solve, like mediating the tribal leaders' dispute in the desert, you should be able to figure it out and pick a logical choice reasonably so I was annoyed by that.

Overall, I'll give this one a 6/8 because while some of the issues really bothered me, I ultimately had a really fun time playing it and that's what matters in the end!

that was fun

Idk how to progress; I have two out of three waters.

it was very fun and i liked it a lot! I would rate it an 8

Thats so goofy of you mmmooommmoooo

This was great! I stared off thinking this was rather linear, but I liked the level of revisiting places and interacting with your inventory. I also got stuck for ages working out how to communicate with the witch doctors, but all the clues are there, you just have to pay attention and read properly! Thanks very much!

So I like the wacky tone of this game. It's set in some kind of a fantasy world but it's got surfer dudes and teens drinking soda water. I tried to find animals in the mountains but only seemed to get myself killed by falling to my death from a cliff. Maybe I should have just done the petting zoo job?
I like that you have different options and don't have to just limit yourself to finding rare animals, although that's still my goal next time I play this.
Goofy, goofy fun.

While kind of simple, I really enjoyed this. It provides a clear mission but has several challenges in the way.

This was really hard, but with some help, I completed it!

I finally figured it out. Yay!

I’m rating this 4/8- slightly more fun than homework- because that’s essentially what this game is. This “puzzle” in particular are not only poorly worded but also strongly resemble a math word problem. I recognize that the story is well-written, but it really wasn’t engaging enough to put me through the effort of figuring out the final witch-doctor puzzle.

Okay, I'll admit, this one had me stumped for a bit, but that just made me feel better when I actually made it through.

I like that you let people get off track and don't just immediately stop with a single choice and an 'ooops you lose' ending. You indulge us with our need to go against the grain, though you don't let us get too far with it.

The writing itself was cute and clever. The descriptions were full enough without going over board, and I found the game rather well paced. However, it lacks depth and most choices are really illusions since it seems (and I could have missed something) that there's really only one route to victory.

All in all, it was enjoyable.

Yay! I did it!

I was stuck FOREVER on trying to communicate with the witch doctor. The only reason I don't feel bad is because so was everyone else I talked to lol.

I'm always a fan of these IF style games and this one had a pretty large map to explore. I did sort of expect the puzzles to focus more on capturing the animal itself however. Once I finally figured out how to get past the witch doctor I went and got the healing water and the game was as good as over. With any other entry I'd expect meeting Nessie to be the point you ran out of time, but then again you did publish a full week before the deadline...

This was a really amazing story!

All in all, this is a very enjoyable game, although you're right that it essentially became a puzzle game. There was definitely some thinking involved, especially with the feuding tribesmen's problem. There are a couple link issues, such as the shop selling you water again if you try to buy food after you've used the first one, but none of them are game-breakers. I really like that besides quitting or dying, there are also endings you can achieve by pursuing one of the other careers. Since the game turned out to be a puzzle game, it's fairly linear other than those two alternate endings, but it's still fun and very well written. I hope you might consider making a sequel to this one day, without the time constraint of a contest, and expand with your initial thoughts of a branching story with different possible animals you could end up bringing back based on your choices. But I applaud the work you did for this one and enjoyed it very much. 6/8

I thought that this was an extremely fun story-game to play, and the writing was as good as always. Nicely done, and I wish you luck for the contest!

Apparently, using yellow dune sand transport you to the desert? How come, food is a one time use thing, after the second click on food link results in getting water? Or am I the only one having problems with this?

I got the account ending with 2 guesses lol.