Zookeeper: Blast Quest takes an early 2000s puzzle franchise and reimagines it for VR, releasing on Quest next month.
Zoo Keeper is a tile-matching puzzle game that was first released in arcades and then later ported to the GameBoy Advance, PlayStation 2, Nintendo DS and, years later, iOS and Android.
Ten years on from the last release of the original game, it’s being reimagined for VR and released on the Quest platform next month in a new package titled Zookeeper: Blast Quest.
Blast Quest isn’t a direct ‘flatscreen-to-VR’ conversion of the original (à la Resident Evil 4). It essentially looks to be a revival of the franchise using the same premise and characters, fleshed out with all new content, ideas and story.
According to the description on the Oculus Store, you’ll be collecting stars by completing puzzles, which will let you “rebuild a large zoo which was abandoned a long time ago”. Anyone else feel like there’s a metaphor in this somewhere?
There’s 7 areas featuring “story-rich content”, which are listed in the description as monkey area, giraffe area, entrance square, petting area, elephant area, lion area and crocodile/hippo area.
You’ll “take on more and more puzzle stages filled with exciting new puzzle gimmicks” as well as being able to “feed animals, search for lost children, fish for food” and more. Similar to games like Angry Birds, each puzzle will grant you a rating out of 3 stars when you finish — unlocking more stars will get you closer to unlocking the game’s secret animals as well.
Zookeeper: Blast Quest releases for Meta Quest sometime in December 2021 and can be wishlisted on the Oculus Store now.
