I mean, you can choose because morality is flexible like that in Let’s Build a Zoo – but why would you waste time worrying about stupid “ethics” or “basic decency” or “zoo licence suspension” when you’ve an opportunity to splice a monkey with a pig? Besides, a zoo licence probably isn’t even a real thing.
Until now, the zoo-builder genre has been inexplicably limited by anti-experimental science design. In games like Zoo Tycoon and Planet Zoo, for example, you can procure and breed exotic species but you can’t mess with their DNA because that’s, like, wrong or whatever. How are you supposed to care about saving pandas if you can’t even eat one just to try it first? Global conservation efforts costs millions every year, but maybe pandas taste gross. We don’t know. That’s a problem.
But Let’s Build a Zoo is different. “Build your own zoo with over 500 different animals at your disposal,” the game’s Steam blurb explains, “then splice together over 300,000 different animal combinations”.
Tell me more.
“Control everything that happens in your park, from what your animals eat to what eats your animals…”
Oooooh, now we’re talking.
Game’s out “soon” on PC, according to Steam, with a console launch unconfirmed at publish time.