TeenCastic – Zooloretto

Image Hosted by ImageShack.us Developer: Chillingo Ltd
Price: $4.99
Version reviewed: 1.1

iPhone Integration: 5 stars
User Interface Rating: 5 stars
Re-use/Replay Value: 4 stars
Overall Rating: 4.7 stars

As we all know, board games are becoming increasingly popular on mobile devices such as the iPhone, and now award-winning family board game ‘Zooloretto’ has finally come to the AppStore!
For those of you how are not familiar to the game, the aim is to place different types of animals in your very own zoo to attract as many visitors as possible.
However you will lose points if you have too many animals and no space for them.

Once you start, you are presented with a tutorial to help you familiarize yourself with the game. Everything is explained very well showing you examples
of different situations you may encounter as you play on. Once that’s over you can finally get into the game; To customize your character simply tap on
him/her on the main-menu and either select the male or female character once you’re done with that you can also change your Player name.
After all this you are ready to play the game. Now you can either play with CPU’s or your friends (Pass and play), in the beginning you can play up-to 3 players (including yourself). However later in the game there are 2 more unlockable characters.

Once you begin you are presented with a view of your zoo (which is obviously empty at first) by tapping on the ‘?’ tile on the bottom-right corner of the screen you will randomly be given an animal, a coin (used for several different things, explained later in the review) or a vending stall which you have to drag onto a truck (3 trucks) this will place the item there and your turn will end and it will move on to your opponents’; they can place their items in any of the trucks
on the screen and so can you; who-ever grabs the truck they want first gets the items in it. The trucks can hold up-to 3 tiles. However if you are satisfied with one of the trucks and it only has 2 tiles you can just tap on it and take the truck. Once you have tapped on a truck the items can be dragged into their specific spot, for example if one of the tiles you got was a monkey you can drag the money into one of the animal pens in your zoo. Note only one specific animal can be placed in a pen so choose your truck wisely, you can end up getting animals that have no space in your zoo and as a result end up getting negative points. However you can expand your zoo to fit more animals if you have enough coins, on the other hand if you don’t have enough coins then they are placed in your barn and that’s how you accumulate negative points. Coins can also be used for things other than expansion; if your opponent has animals in his/her barn that you may need you can buy it from them, you can also use coins to make animals switch pens etc. If a male and female animal are put in the same pen they give birth to young ones, this can increase your visitor points. Similarly vending stalls, expansion and filling up pens do the same.
Opponents can be really tough at times but that’s all part of the fun. The game is designed pretty well and graphics and music is spot-on. However you may get bored of this game after you have fully explored it. The game also automatically saves if you quit in the middle of a match.

The Conclusion: Zooloretto is probably one of the most awesome board games I’ve played on my iPhone so far, from gameplay to graphics Chillingo has got it spot-on
however I’d like to see some more features added soon like Wi-Fi multiplayer for a start. If you’re looking for a family board game or just want to kill some extra
time I highly recommend getting Zooloretto.