Wholesome gaming has enjoyed a renaissance in recent years, providing players with feel-good titles like Stardew Valley and Slime Rancher. Let's Build a Zoo seems to be cut from a similar cloth given its playful pixel art graphics. However, James Barnard, a former AAA developer-turned-indie team leader, is offering something slightly different: a game with bizarre and macabre moral choices informed by real-world anecdotes about zoos. The charming and robust title invites players to be as sunny or as twisted as they want.
Strict good versus evil moral choice systems are nothing new, and have come under fire in recent years for being reductive zero-sum games compared to more modern, morally conflicted protagonists. Barnard told Game Rant he believes developers can, and should, do more with morality in games. Unlike the binary spectrum in Red Dead Redemption 2 and the black-and-white ethics of BioShock, Let's Build a Zoo allows players to switch between diabolical and saintly actions, allowing them to carve more distinctive - and amusing - moral paths.
Fake Lions for Fun and Profit
Barnard isn't hoping to beat players over the head with a wholesome agenda, or even convey a specific message through gameplay. That said, he confessed he was not fond of zoos when he began the project, as he is opposed to environments where unethical things can happen to animals. Over the course of developing the game, he discovered more positive aspects of zoos, along with a slew of outlandish anecdotes and hilarious stories about things that have happened in zoos.
“At the beginning of the game, you get a dog. Or rather, somebody loses their dog. You have the option of returning it to the person who lost it, since the collar has their number on it. Or, you can put a little costume on it, dress it like a lion, and put it in your zoo.”
Barnard said this story beat was inspired by a zoo in China that actually dressed a labrador up with a fake mane and put it on exhibit as a lion. Upon encountering these bizarre situations, Barnard tries to incorporate them into Let's Build a Zoo. Using outlandish stories as source material fuels the game with a steady stream amusing content and turns the typical moral choice dilema on its head, while drawing attention to the sort of ethics associated with putting animals on display.
Dog Meat and Other Matters of Perspective
Barnard feels there is "a clinical separation" between peoples' affection toward animals and consumption of animals, especially where zoos are concerned. He hopes to break down those mental barriers with provocative humor and accessible gameplay, arguing that morality is still a relatively untapped vein in terms of game development. He said our morality with regards to animals is often rooted in regional cultural biases.
"I went to Vietnam, and they are selling dog on the side of the road. And I was thinking, I should eat dog. Even though I’m 90 percent vegetarian - I rarely eat meat - I had to try it. Because I love the idea that if I had been raised in Vietnam, I wouldn’t be offended by that. It’s a product of my upbringing that I am offended by it."
Indie games are particularly well positioned to explore the odder aspects of ethics. In AAA development, Barnard said there is no room for "stupid humor" in a product. But these bizarre and potentially off-putting situations, like using dead animals as food for other animals (or even ingredients for concession stands) somehow feel more plausible, ambiguous, and real than typical moral choice systems where the player must choose between ruthless villainy or messianic heroism.
Spliced Menageries
Splicing animals is one of Let's Build a Zoo's novel systems, allowing players to gradaully map an animal's genome and then combine it with other completed genomes to make adorable, terrifying, or bizarre fusions like elephant/giraffes or capybarra/ducks. These strange additions add a fun, "gotta catch 'em all" element to the gameplay, and while the genomes are not easy to complete, these chimera will draw guests to the player's zoo in droves.
The system is also a perfect microcosm for Let's Build a Zoo's approach to humor and morality. The mechanics themselves are a lighthearted oversimplification of genetic modification, similar to other titles featuring creature mixing-and-matching mechanics. Let's Build a Zoo's system boasts over 300,000 potential combinations, according to Barnard. Like labrador lions and roadside dog meat, splicing simultaneously encourages players to embrace their inner Dr. Frankenstein while hinting at more pervassive ethical questions associated with cultivating and commoditizing animals.
Barnard said he does not want to preach at players, however. First and foremost, Let's Build a Zoo is intended as lighthearted fun for animal lovers. Still, gamers with a twisted sense of humor will get just as much out of the title as those who wish to do no wrong.
Let's Build a Zoo is available now for PC.