Zoo Keeper (video Game) - Gameplay - Main Stage: Contain The Escaping Animals

Main Stage: Contain The Escaping Animals

In the first type of stage, Zeke moves and jumps along a rectangular perimeter surrounding a cage in the center of the screen, which is unlocked and thus allowing animals inside to escape. Zeke's orientation changes as he walks around the perimeter (at the bottom of the rectangle he appears to be upside-down), and players must adjust their joystick movements as he moves around corners. As he walks, he quickly builds a brick wall under his feet that is intended to keep the animals from moving outside the perimeter. The wall he builds becomes thicker as he walks around the same area multiple times, but the animals are also breaking the wall from the inside as they try to escape, so the stage is a constant fight between Zeke and the animals to build up and tear down the perimeter wall. The first two main stages begin with a thin wall already in place, but after that the wall must be built from scratch. Zeke builds thicker walls as the game progresses.

If an animal escapes from the perimeter, it roams freely around the perimeter just like Zeke, who must then avoid the animal by running in the opposite direction or jumping over it. If Zeke touches an animal (without using the zookeeper's net), he will lose a life and have to start over again, although any walls currently in place will still remain. Jumping over animals earns points, and the number of points increases exponentially with the number of animals under Zeke during the jump. Zeke's jump distance is fairly long, he can jump around corners, and he can change directions in mid-air. Therefore, part of the stage's point-earning strategy is to jump over as many animals as possible in a single jump. A musical sound is played when Zeke jumps over animals (very similar to the music played at a baseball game before fans chant "Charge!"), and the pitch of the music increases depending on how many animals were jumped.

While Zeke is building walls and jumping over animals, a timer at the top of the screen is counting down to the end of the stage. The animation of the timer graphic is analogous to a fuse like one would see attached to a stick of dynamite. As this fuse "burns" from left to right, the burning end crosses over a series of four items along the fuse. When an item is burned by the timer fuse, a distinct sound is heard, the item appears on the perimeter (in a pre-determined position for the stage), and Zeke can then grab the item by moving over it. The item disappears if the fuse moves over to the next item before Zeke can grab it.

There are two types of items: bonus items and the zookeeper's net. The player is awarded a set number of points for the first item that is grabbed, and each additional item collected will award double the points of the previous item. The zookeeper's net will also award points just like a bonus item, but additionally the screen will turn blue and Zeke will briefly be able to use the net to recapture animals that are roaming the perimeter by touching them with the net to force them back into their cage. The net only moves the animals back inside the perimeter, the cage is still unlocked and Zeke must continue to maintain the wall to keep the animals contained.

The stage is over when the timer fuse burns to the "END" box in the upper righthand corner (the box "explodes" and a "gong" sound is played). At the end of the stage, the player receives bonus points for each animal that was within the perimeter when the time expired. The number of points for each animal depends on the type of animal (bonus points for lions also increase with harder stages). A distinct sound is played for each animal type as they are inventoried at the end of the stage. A laughing sound is heard if no animals were contained.

The escaping animals stages are the most common stages in the game, with the other stage types interspersed between them. When the game is first started, instructions are shown for how to play this type of stage, but not for the other stages. The number, diversity, and ferocity of the animals increases with each new stage. Each stage has its own type of bonus items and item distribution along the fuse, meaning that the zookeeper's net may appear early or late in the stage. Additionally, the fuse itself takes longer to burn to the end in later stages, making animal containment and survival more difficult. The color borders around the stages also begin to flash after the first lion stage. Zelda does not appear in these stages.