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RSSZoo Lasso Review for iPhone and iPod Touch
Posted by Marne Cales on Dec 8, 2009 at 6:40 pm | View Comments • Digg storyFiled Under: Games • Reviews • iPhone
Any good zookeeper knows you have to keep the same types of animals together. In Zoo Lasso, you work your way up through eleven levels of loop-drawing fun to group and remove the same species from the screen before it gets too crowded.
Review
Zoo Lasso is the first release from Launching Pad Games, and they’ve done a nice job for their first effort.
Game play is very simple: animals appear, and you draw a circle around the same species to clear them from the screen. Draw figure-eight shapes with one species in each loop for more points. The more loops, the higher the multiplier you earn. The screen gradually becomes more and more crowded, so you have to move quickly to keep it from becoming too full and thus ending your game. A turtle crosses the screen occasionally; circle him and earn of few seconds of frozen time. This gives you the chance to clear as many animals as possible before any new ones appear.
With each level achieved a message flashes on the screen, notifying you of your new rank, and a fresh background appears, which keeps things interesting.
The graphics are cute and charming and very polished. The music is just your average, peppy background tune, but you can listen to your music from your library by going to your iPod and starting your playlist and then opening the game and tapping “No” when asked if you want sounds enabled.
There’s not a lot too this game, but it’s still quite addictive to keep re-playing to better your score. I think it’s a good example of less-is-more, and it gives the developer room to easily update with new levels and animals. It’s also great when you just want to play a little five-minute game.
Zoo Lasso is OpenFeint enabled, so you can share high-scores with your friends, although I never had any luck connecting, just a Score Processing message for several minutes.
Recommendation
I recommend this game for younger kids, I think they’ll really enjoy the cute animals and quick action. Zoo Lasso is just 99 cents in the app store.
Gameplay Video
Photos
Note: A promotional code was provided by the creator for use in this article.
Please post your comments, tips, and your own reviews below in the comments area!
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Like the review says, the game may appeal to younger kids superficially, but it's compelling for those of us with OCD. Fun, if you're into clearing stuff, making everything look neat.
Yeah, we tried to make the game appealing on two levels. There's the simple approach that kids can get into where you're simply circling species. Then there's expert play where you're going for the big combos, huge groups of animals and clearing the screen. We'll be interested to see what kind of high scores dedicated players can achieve in the long run.
It's odd that the reviewer couldn't connect to OpenFeint – not sure what might have caused that problem! Anyway, we've got an update coming for the game next week, with around 15 OpenFeint Achievements and an improved OpenFeint interface.
Also check out our only-tangentially-related music video 'Lasso Boogaloo', which I'll link to below. Nothing like animals joining an eighties rock band, right? :^)
Here's 'Lasso Boogaloo':
[youtube 8gg73v5iWyY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gg73v5iWyY youtube]
As a spoof, I thought it would be hilarious if there were a version where the animals could lasso human beings, where different animals had different roping capabilities, speeds, etc. – sort of an antidote to all those buck-and-doe target shooters in the appstore. Of course, this just lays the ground for a whole series of similar themes based on the same line-drawing/grouping idea.
Thanks for the comment Tim. I still haven't connected to OpenFeint in the game, but I'll check after the update and report back
)
Yogi-you're right about the OCD need to clear the whole board, I found myself ridiculously pleased every time I managed to do it.
yogi: Haha, maybe a bonus mode for a future version, you think? And of course there's always 'Zombie Lasso' or 'Generic Fantasy Creature Lasso' as well.
Marne: Oh dear, apologies for the OpenFeint problems! I'll certainly be investigating the issue; there may be a subtle bug in our leaderboard-connection code. I'll do my best to track it down for the upcoming 1.1 release.
Tim: GOP Lasso.
We've submitted our 1.1 update to Apple, which introduces 17 varied OpenFeint achievements.
I've also corrected a bug where 'Processing Score' could stay onscreen (if you submit to OpenFeint but aren't currently connected to the internet). Possibly this is the problem that Marne was seeing?