Idle Zoo Park Review

Whilst I’m not the biggest fan of the Zoo when it comes to how animals are confined to a small space for their entire presence on planet Earth, I do understand that it can be neccesary to protect some endangered species. Idle Zoo Park is an indie title that doesn’t go too deep into any of that and instead, you’ll just be growing a series of different Zoo locations. The game has been around for a good few years now on Nintendo Switch and Playstation. It finally arrives onto Xbox and if you love the idle clicker genre of games, then this may be for you.

Get Your Click On!

The premise of Idle Zoo Park is pretty straightforward. You’ll be tasked with bringing neglected Zoo parks back up to standard. You start with a minimal amount of money which is just enough to open your first enclosure. You’ll make money per minute and more money by tapping the A button repeatedly. The more of your Zoo you bring back to life, the more money you begin to make. Levelling up your enclosures also increases revenue as well as investing in elements like more frequent buses and so on.

There is a wheel you can spin every five minutes which will give you a percentage increase. This will drive your money even higher. Once you have done enough within a Zoo, it will give you the option to move onto the next. You can do this at any time from the menu. Achievements are pretty much the end goal here with some such as level up ten enclosures to level ten or spin the wheel twenty times, you get the jist.

Visuals & Audio

Idle Zoo Park has presentation that you’d typically expect from a game of this genre. It’ll remind you of something you’d see on the Apple or Android playstores. The control scheme is pretty simple in that everything is a press of the A button. Even navigation around your zoo is controlled by pressing A and dragging the screen up and down. Admittedly I found this quite confusing to figure out at first and it took me a good ten minutes how to move around the screen.

There are no sound effects whatsoever during gameplay and one music track that plays repeatedly which I had to turn off after five minutes. It would have been nice to have a mixture of music to mix things up. I did like that when you upgrade enclosures through the 250 levels they change aesthetics at certain stages. You may see more animals within the enclosure or more decorative features within them. There are visitors within your gym and it has this staggered approach to their movement which does look a little jarring at times.

Every Zoo Is Almost Identical

When you start each Zoo run, you’re met with the exactly the same barren and neglected layout to start the process each time again. The only differences I noticed that a few of the later levels had maybe one new enclosure like monkeys. It doesn’t feel different enough each time and you just feel like you’re playing the exact same Zoo over and over again. It becomes reptitive and rather boring very quickly. I know idle clicker games don’t have masses of variance but I feel more could have been done to keep it fresh and interesting throughout.

Final Thoughts

Idle Zoo Park provides a good few hours of fun if you want to work through the experience for all the achievements. Unfortunately though it becomes extremely repetitive with little variance througout the different Zoo locations. Going from one Zoo to another feels like you’re just repeating the same level again with the odd single enclosure being the only difference.

After two hours I had gained all of the achievements apart from the last two, one of which wants you to spin the wheel fifty times, and the other unlocks once you have gained all other achievements. Sadly I didn’t feel the need to return for close to three more hours of clicking on completed levels to get the full one thousand gamerscore. Completionists may find that it is worth their time to boost their personal gamerscore. But this experience will last you a few short hours at best.