Ignition Zoo Keeper

Description: The venerable "match-three-panels-in-a-row" puzzler debuts on the DS with a fun backstory and a few clever twists, including head-to-head play. As the story goes, one day the animals in the zoo got fed up with the arrogant zoo boss and riot.... Read More

Description: The venerable "match-three-panels-in-a-row" puzzler debuts on the DS with a fun backstory and a few clever twists, including head-to-head play. As the story goes, one day the animals in the zoo got fed up with the arrogant zoo boss and rioted. As the zookeeper, your job is to corral the wild life by matching three in a row. The square-shaped animals are distributed in an 8-panel-by-8-panel pen. On the left, your timer ticks down. Gameplay consists of switching adjacent panels. When you match three panels in a row, they vanish, the rows above each move down, and the top of the board is filled in with panels.You can switch panels with the A Button, but much, much quicker and far more intuitive is the stylus. Leave it to the Nintendo DS to make a classic type of game feel fresh and simply by allowing you to touch.If you can match four or five panels in a row or eliminate multiple rows of animals at once, you'll get extra points. Chains, which occur when falling panels create three-in-a-row matches, give you even more points. When you eliminate panels, you're also give precious seconds.It sound a lot like Pok?mon Puzzle Attack, but with some very significant differences. Most importantly, you can't move a panel more than one space. If your move doesn't create a row of three like panels, the CPU automatically moves both panels back to their original position. This seemingly minor restriction makes the game feel much more tactical than your typical action-oriented puzzler.And because the screen is always filled with panels, Zoo Keeper feels like a real mental challenge. Sometimes, there is only one possible match of three in a row. If no panels can be matched, the CPU will automatically switch out all panels.In the basic single-player mode, you start out with seven kinds of animals: monkeys, pandas, giraffes, hippos, elephants, alligators and lions. In the first round, you'll have to capture at least three of each, then four of each in the next round, and so forth. As you advance, additional animals will be added to the mix.In the clever Quest mode, your irascible boss will present you with unusual challenges, such as capturing 15 more pandas than giraffes (or vice versa). There's also a Time Attack mode, a two-player Battle mode and "Tokoton" mode, in which your goal is to capture 100 animals.Various power-ups include a wild card that eliminates all of one randomly chosen panel. You also get a limited number of binocular power-ups, which highlight possible matches. Minimize