Yeah, the trailer made it seem like any animal could turn at any moment and one of them implied that the protagonist was close to the animals, which makes their mutation even more dreadful.
Yea genuinely. Im not even really that mad more severely disappointed since I purposefully waited before buying to first watch others’ review so I managed to save myself, but I was so, so excited for the launch and was really bummed that it came out half baked. Genuine biggest letdown of the year, but hey that’s really just the way the games industry works these days and it doesn’t seem like it was intentionally bad, just failed to live up expectations. I feel bad for all the people who bought it day 1 though, I would’ve been a lot more pissed if I did
@@midgematic8659 Since many indie horror games are inspired by current horror games, maybe we could hope that someone makes a similar game based off of the trailer, it could be really cool. A nice concept would that there was a virus that had spread around, our main character zookeeper only sees his animals as friends, it wants to protect them. There is cure but it will take X amount of days to get to the zoo. Until then he’ll need to use a medicine that slows down the transformation though there’s only a limited amount of vials. From there, there are a lot of ways to take the horror
I heard that there was actually way more both done and planned but the guy responsible has a falling out with the others somehow and they just destroyed all the work and cut it down to what it is now. Take this with a grain of Salt of course, I read this in the comments of a guy making proper walk cycles for the animals
@@lydiagalantmotherfactually, one of the main writers died while developing the title, and since this is people’s whole livelihoods on the line, they couldn’t stop development or delay the game and kept on rolling with the punches and trying to save whatever they can while grieving
Part of me thinks that Doc's frequent swearing and stilted dialog was intentional. It feels like he was meant to come off as sort of weird and off-kilter, trying too hard to be casual and friendly, but the voice actor wasn't properly directed. However, the terrible audio editing does kinda make it seem like its purely a result of incompetence. Also a note, but the term "zoochosis" was invented by an anti-zoo group. Its just a portmanteau of "zoo" and "psychosis", and these symptoms exclusively occur in animals that are poorly treated and/or not given proper enrichment, not just any captive animal. I think its important for people to know this, since a lot of people will just google the term and take the first result at face value.
@@SissypheanCatboy i feel like thatll just backfire for the animal rights. as it kinda just paints it something that just happens instead of something the zoo can do to improve the animals well being
@@theshuman100 Yes, well, people like that aren't truly that invested in the actual well-being of animals. They're far more worried about their own moral and ethical compass. I doubt most of them are willfully malignant, but to people like that good intentions are the same as good deeds. As long as it makes them feel good, then it was the right choice, and anyone trying to explain otherwise is just another adversary.
I sincerely hope a future indie developer takes the concept of a zoo-based horror game and does it more justice than this game or Zoonomaly did. It's such a potent idea and it's sad to see two viral games this year that mostly wasted it imo.
Agreed - just imagine how many different kinds of animal/monster designs you can shove in here and NOT have it be so out of nowhere just from the setting alone. Heck you don't even need to do that - you simply need all the animals to escape at night with some guy stuck inside trying to just make it through - that can be scary enough on it's own.
Yeah its such a good idea that it doesn't even rely on supernatural circumstances. You could make a horror game set in a zoo where all the animals are just normal animals but they escape or something and it would still have so much potential
@reedlewis2968 totally, have YOU picked a fight with a gorilla? Or an elephant? Terrifying man.... I'd love to see some purple incel wannabe take THAT. 🦍🐘😂
I could see this being something that gets a REALLY cool remake/reimagining in like, 10 years. The game obviously has problems but it’s hard to deny it’s a big step up from their last. Could be the start of a huge glow up story
God, I hope so. The concept of animals mutating/turning into these horrific versions of themselves while you’re trying to be a normal zookeeper is way too good a concept to throw away, and my god these DESIGNS - _mwah_ perfect
@@Tyler-q3k I couldn't get past the stolen meat block and human grinding machine. I was already suspending my disbelief over our oblivious protagonist. But that level of campy story telling is not what I got from the trailers. Just threw off the whole vibe.
@rutyqutykandi1361 that's what I'm saying! He gets knocked out by his new "boss" 5 seconds into the game! And the steps required to get the "good" ending are so specific and convoluted, that it doesn't feel worth it.
Because of my great priorities, I'm dissapointed that you dont interact with the animals according to their natural behaviours. Especially with the gorillas, with them having such complex social cues and also being INCREDIBLY strong zookeepers have to be extra careful with them and even take measures to have them be inside while their enclosures are cleaned. Just walking up and taking a blood sample is NOT happening. Buuut that'd also be VERY complicated to implement and obviously not neccessary. I'm just an animal behaviour nerd.,
Honestly? It would add some much-needed variety to the gameplay loop. This enclosure plays like a stealth game (need to sneak around without being spotted or waking them up), that one is a puzzle game (lure them into lockable areas or devices to treat them safely), etc. It would even make the ones where you *can* just walk up & pet the animals feel like a nice break.
As a fellow zoology nerd, I agree. It'd add some variety to the gameplay and an additional threat outside the monsters. Just because an animal isn't a carnivore doesn't mean it isn't dangerous, after all!
It's really sad how this went, I was so excited for a zoo version of The Thing, where I would have to determine what enclosure was possibly infected. but instead it's every single one has one infected every single time.
And it's always the same exact trigger, it could've been timed depending on which type of parasite it is, but it triggers as soon as you get the diagnostics for the animals and make medicine.
Honestly, if they DID write this like The Thing, it would be at least decent, also Paul is kinda dumb, if your new boss knocks you out on your first day, and takes your fucking phone, to work at a fucking ZOO, it's PROBABLY bad news.
Unfortunately, even if it did lean more into The Thing inspiration people would still complain about the tedious zookeeper gameplay. I think people were too enamored by the concept and trailer that nobody thought playing as a zookeeper would be pretty boring until the fake animal revealed itself.
@ViniciusDiasissy He didn't die, after, ahem, *the bite* , our friendly neighbour agreed to help him heal, because he said he has a hospital in his basement 🥰🥰
I *think* they were trying to make Doc feel like a clinical psychopath who's trying to sound normal, but failing and being unsettling in the process, but it doesn't really work.
i wonder how much the game wouldve benifited from a more normal zoo layout. being able to spot a sick animal through the glass as you are on your way to checking up on another animal so that now you have to put a mental note what enclosure to do next.
I feel like Zoochosis' writing is yet another victim of developers trying to write games in languages in which they are not fluent. What's wrong with making games in your own language? Why does *everything* have to be in English? On second thought, there's some spots where the narrative itself is clearly stupid, rather than just the writing. Like Paul stealing mystery animal meat on his first day at his well-paid new job WHILE WEARING A BODYCAM.
For REAL. Player character has an incurable case of "why would he fucking do that" syndrome. In addition to the whole parasite thing. In what world is zoo meat (which even if it WASN'T human meat, would generally be unsafe for human consumption) better than hot dogs and Kraft Dinner? Especially when you're ON CAMERA STEALING IT.
I mean that's a nice thought but it's extremely unrealistic, do you expect them to market this extremely story based game to exclusively people who speak Uzbek?
5:17 - 5:45 The only reminder that you’re watching through a bodycam is the static that takes up the screen sometimes. Usually after a mutated animal attacks Paul. 6:48 - 7:34 THANK YOU! I'm *so* sick of people saying the game uses AI voices.
@@vendybirdsvadl7472 I saw some people who thought that for the same reason on Twitter. The devs said it was a visual error and I don’t think a lot of people bought that; even I questioned it because how does an error like that even happen?
@@sugarp1e174 Yeah the AI voice allegations were just effing stupid. People literally just scream "OMG AI!!!" whenever there's mid voice-acting now and it's not cute.
@6Shots_ofEspresso If it makes you feel any better I would take subpar art made from an actual human than anything made by AI Not to mention I got a feeling your art would look better than anything I can do.
honestly part of the completely alien dialogue for me is paul just ignoring his wife standing out in the rain, even telling doc NOT to tell her she can leave, which is just insane to me as much as stealing animal food for his sick child
Imagine your beloved dog/cat gets sick, and you know it has something to do with a private animal collection/closed zoo/research facility. You're a vet/zoologist/biologist of some kind who has no other option than to break into the zoo to see if you can figure out what infected your pet. As the night goes on, you uncover mutations and use your knowledge to figure out a cure, gather evidence to take down the owners of the zoo, and save your pet while surviving and not getting caught I'd like to see that story with this premise and a polished game It's a shame it's so bad, zoo keeping can really lend inself to interesting gameplay, and there's not a lot out there (mostly zoo tycoon style management)
I'm not one to play horror games but I really think there's potential here for a multiplayer version. Even if it's something like one player being the parasite and tasked with infecting animals and other players have to wipe it out or loose trying. Or just have a 4 player tag team with all areas being accessible and the goal being to heal all the animals etc. If Lethal Company has taught me anything, it's that the best horror and humour comes from the players themselves, and a good way to create a multiplayer horror game is to give people ways of messing with each other alongside the incentives to work together. (That way when the scares wear off there's still the humour to fall back on.)
Honestly, I think if someone could have another crack at the whip on this, we could have something truly special. I even think the same company could do it if they paid attention to the criticism - the animals as well as their mutations are absolutely ace. Considering all the patches, I'm willing to hold out hope. Maybe some different processes to make different cures, some rewards for saving all the animals, greater direction and we'd have something truly awesome.
Another issue, I think, with the cursing is they do it wrong. "A hundred thousand fucking american dollars" doesn't sound right; it's not the right word. "A hundred thousand god-damn american dollars" would flow a lot better. There's probably some obscure grammatical rule that shapes this, probably something about how fucking is a verb. Anyways, I'm just pedantic about swearing
Interesting. I was inclined to agree with your take, but I'd disagree with your example (to me, "goddamn" sounds more out of place there than "fucking" does.). It's probably a regional and generational thing which swears you'd use where - which means what may sound natural to one person might sound off to another (for example, "goddamn" isn't very common where I'm from, so maybe that's why it sounds out-of-place to me while sounding better to you). No real conclusion I mostly just thought it was interesting how different our views on the "right" swears to use were.
I think it's also the placement in the sentence. Putting a swear between "a hundred" and "thousand" would have probably worked better to emphasize the amount. Or even between "a" and "hundred" for the same reason.
Well, I feel bad for jumping on the AI voice bandwagon when this game came out. It was probably due to the stilted dialogue that made me think that and seeing another person's comment on 8-BitRyan's playthrough of the game, plus a little bit of a bias from your Sparky Marky video. I will also say that I am completely wrong in the fact that Clapperhead Studios is at least trying to fix the game, because I thought they would just abandon it after release. However, now hearing Doc's voice actor outside of this game, it kinda gives me a vibe of if John Goodman narrated Thomas and Friends, since the voice actor's voice does sound like John Goodman.
I really hope that Tim Stephenson gets more and *better* video game work after this because I could listen to him all day. Just... I think I'd prefer to listen to his gutter protector ad on loop than actually play Zoochosis.
I lowkey wanna make a dark comic for Zoochosis, where like,,, the main character is paul and it's just the game but actually good and dark and nice writing and actual spookiness...
Would love to see such a thing. Cause the game did not deliver it's promise TwT Was so hoping to even see them just mutate but it's just a static transition which was so lame.
been a while, no? also, it's sad to see that after all you said about the devs (in the sparky video), doesn't seem like things got better :P. and also, hope you feel better soon, lad. hopefully you'll soon get 50k subs ^^
The best way to improve this game is to play it while listening to the theme music from a different zoo game. Zoo Tycoon, Planet Zoo, and Putt Putt Saves the Zoo (the topiary creatures) all have great choices
One thing I think would have made the game better would be changing how you travel to the exhibits, I think what most people thought the game would’ve been you could go to any exhibit at any time. I think having a Vidal system where you can see how all the animals are doing and they could tern at almost any time, and instead of having the game be based on how many exhibits you experience, and instead have it be time based, where you have to keep the animals alive until morning and having you health be a major thing to keep track of, so you are able to make it till morning. This can also make the researching section of the animals more useful, we could be told which one is sick but were not told which animal is which and we could get some clues on what to look for in the animal and when we enter the area a timer could start till the animal mutates and have the timer be about 10 ish minutes before the mutation, and maybe have a consequent for letting the animals die could be something like the parasites spreading far quicker. This doesn’t change the story that much but it improves the gameplay significantly, this may be a bit of a tall order but I think this is the game we would’ve wanted and thanks for reading this super long comment about a mutant zoo horror game and if you think these ideas are interested or would’ve made the game better, consider giving this comment a like and maybe give you own ideas of what would’ve made the game better?
This game is alarmingly similar to Security Breach. Hear me out: The trailers tease a gorgeous-looking scary game about exploration, problem-solving, and uncovering a deeper mystery. What we get is a game that, while it looks absolutely stunning, has underbaked mechanics, basically no story worth investing in, and so, so, so many bugs they couldn't fix before launch. I wonder if the problems that plagued Security Breach's development also affected the Zoochosis Team. The outcomes just feel too similar to be a coincidence.
I was so looking forward to this game only be horribly underwhelmed. They where so focused on the gameplay elements they forgot actually MAKE THE GAME.
I'm really enjoying the game for what it is, it's fun trying to pick different things to see what ending I get. Also I was messing around with the UV light pretending to look for parasites and instead found hidden codes for the lockers.
Wow love your character!! Found you just scrolling around and this vid was super well made. Heard about this game but never got around to trying it. This was rly cool explaining it all
I feek really bad for the devs of this game. Their screen writer dying must habe really affected the development of the game... And the ai claims must really hurt. It looks like they are really trying to fix the game, but they should have taken more time to release
From the very first trailer, I thought it was about a zoo keeper that was either old or new doing his daily rounds taking care of the animals then noticing something horrifying. Then he's trying to find a cure for the killer parasite quickly as possible before the mutated animals get out of the Zoo an reek havoc. I was sincerely disappointed when I saw others play it an learned how bad it was.
The wild thing is? A horror game with terrible voice direction doesn’t have to suck. The very same language barrier etc. made resident evil 1 and silent hill 2 huge successes. The fact that no one is talking like a human can hit the uncanny valley and linger there. Unfortunately, it’s to easy to see what they were going for and the tropes are so stale (Doc is literally just movie William Afton) that it never really unsettles you. Plus the game is so short that kinda slow burn unease would be pointless anyway.
I was so hyped after the trailers, thinking it would be similar to FNAF Pizza Sim in the horror-but-also-franchise-manager game Instead it was just exposition and exposition and zero tension because you can't die and point and shoot boss "battles".
I think really if you want a version of this game that actually relies on horror you’d have to stick with either subtle storytelling or less task-based gameplay. I’ve had such severe brainrot over what this game could’ve been that I’ve tried reworking it to see if I can find any way to redeem the storyline (though my version cuts out a lot of characters, and the Mother). You still play as Paul Connelly, working at Pine Valley Zoo in order to help support your wife and daughter, although you are a trained exotic animals veterinarian. You’ve been brought in from a different zoo to help treat sick animals, as this particular zoo seems to consistently have issues with its animals becoming unwell. You meet your boss, who ensures that your vaccinations are in order, before mentioning that you need a specific vaccination as there’s a possibility that you’ll be working with penguins, and you agree. After signing the contract, you’re led to a professional-looking laboratory/veterinary clinic and given your ‘vaccine’ (which obviously, like the game is an injection of a parasite, although not one that’s so alien like). You begin the gameplay on Monday, and this portion of the game is tutorial-based, as in-game, your boss wants to see whether or not you will prove to be a reliable asset to the zoo, and most importantly to curing the animals, by allowing you to learn game mechanics by treating birds, such as lovebirds and parrots. I’d use the tutorial section to set up the seedy nature of employers towards the animals there - seeing these types of animals as disposable. The game mechanics specifically would be similar to those already in the game: seeing if the animals are eating, taking temperatures, and taking blood and fecal samples, but with a change - when an animal is flagged as being sick, the play has to work out whether the illness is bacterial, viral, or parasitic based on the samples already gathered, or new tasks that will narrow down the diagnosis. As the tutorial progresses, the player would be able to treat Birds of Prey, and during this section of the tutorial, the animals begin to show symptoms of zoochosis (linking the gameplay to the name) as their enclosures are clearly not stimulating enough for them, although the player character doesn’t initially register this as a potential cause of the illnesses. Days 2 and 3 (Tuesday and Wednesday) would be where I’d have the gameplay begin to pick up, with your character being able to treat small mammals, such as meerkats, fennec foxes, and red pandas. The player continues checking the animals’ health, noting the symptoms of zoochosis, until they find a meerkat female displaying unusually heightened levels of aggression, even partaking in self-mutilation. When the player runs tests, the animal presents as having some form of infection, that has physical symptoms that match a bacte infection, but the animal’s behavioural symptoms make no sense with the diagnosis - the player character even considers the possibility of the animal suffering from some level of zoochosis. Treating the animal anyway, the player finishes their tasks for the day. Wednesday opens with the player returning to the meerkat’s cage, only to find that the meerkat has killed multiple of its cagemates. Here the player has to involve their boss, who, if the player chooses to bring up the conditions the animals are kept in, will dismiss it, and say that their enclosures have been approved by quote unquote ‘specialists’. The boss then captures the meerkat, and implies that they’re taking it to have it put to sleep, telling the player that sometimes things like this happen, and if the general public knew what a cruel and vicious place the animal kingdom really was, then they’d never even dream of visiting zoos, making a final comment that the player has otherwise shown good capability, and will be allowed to begin curing a section of the zoo of their choice - told to pick an area they specialise in. You continue your day, although the small mammals seem to be acting more aggressively towards you than usual, and as night falls, you swear that you feel as if they’re hunting you, or at least, something lurking in the dark is. As the player exits from the final enclosure, they catch a glimpse something much bigger than the animals they’ve been looking after so far, something with too many eyes, too many legs, the sound of breathing strangely disjointed, as if whatever this creature is breathing from two mouths. As quickly as this encounter starts, it’s over, leaving both the character and the player confused and baffled as what just happened. Once the player returns to the veterinary centre, they’re given a choice as to which area of the zoo they wish to focus on from four options: Big cats, Apes, Savannah animals, and Arctic animals. Thursday gameplay occurs the same as Tuesday and Wednesday gameplay - there are multiple sick animals, with one or two presenting with symptoms of zoochosis, alongside other symptoms, leading to the player not being able to diagnose what the animals are suffering from acutely enough to treat them. They bring this up to their boss, who tasks them with the task of trying to identify the source of this infection, and potentially produce a cure, but of course as the character is only an exotic animals vet, this requires abilities beyond their skillset. They stay longer, tasked with studying the creatures’ behaviours over the course of Thursday to Saturday but are free to explore more behind the scenes areas of the zoo, which, if done thoroughly enough, will lead to the player finding clues and notes that point to what is actually going on (the zoo is actually an undercover animal testing facility, bio-engineering a pathogen/parasite that can induce psychotic behaviour in both humans and animals. The people testing the pathogen need to see how animals infected respond to people, how well the parasite spreads, and whether there’s any human/animal transmission. The vaccine you were given at the start of the game was actually the parasite, and as the game progresses, the effects of this manifest.) Each day, the player is given a new set of animals to care for, and at night, the infected animals become hostile towards the player, mutating into grotesque versions of themselves seen in the game. The player has to navigate surviving these mutations, collecting samples from them, as well as testing the other animals in order to find some sort of vaccine or cure to the parasitic infection. There are times that the player should begin to question whether or not the mutations are real or if the player is taking the route of working out what’s going on in the zoo, whether they’re just a side effect of their own infection. Saturday is the final day of the game, and the one where the player must face the most hostile/dangerous animal in their chosen specialty. The night mode is especiall hard, as the other mutations they’ve had to deal with have escaped from their enclosures - the player is being stalked through a dark zoo at night, with no clear way to dispatch or fight back against the horrific animal abominations chasing them, with a plan for a cure that either has no effectiveness or has the possibility to put an end to this animal testing nightmare, depending on the player’s level of knowledge. The game ends with the player injecting themselves with the cure, resulting in a ‘good’ or a bad ending. In the bad ending, the player is not cured, and is forced to watch their own body transform into something Lovecraftian, not even human, as their body succumbs to the infection. In the ‘good’ ending, the player is able to cure themselves, and sets out to cure the afflicted animals, but is prevented by their boss, who applauds them, and offers them a choice: they can either join their team of researchers, and contribute to the animal testing, which while goes against the character’s moral code, would provide them with enough of an income that their family can live comfortably, or the boss will be forced to kill them. If the player chooses to join the researchers, the game ends with the player given a small insight into the true exent of the underground operation. If they refuse, the boss leaves them to the infected animals, which are not shown to be either simply psychotic animals, or truly the grotesque mutations seen earlier in the game. That’d be my idea for zoochosis!! Feel free to let me know what you think in the replies!!
Just wanted to say, I absolutely love your character drawings/sprites! 😍 The color palette is bright and fun to look at, and expertly avoids the “DeviantArt Oc syndrome” (of over saturation) we’re all familiar with. 🌟Subscribed!🌟
Honestly, to me the biggest disappointment for me is that the game doesn’t encourage you to care about the animals? Like using lethal injection should feel like a tragic last resort after you fail to save them, otherwise it just feels like ‘aight zombie shooting time’ to get to the end quicker.
-One thing dataminers were able to find is that the writing was incomplete as there was supposed to be multiple nights that you were supposed to be at the zoo but with the death of the writer, the rest of the team crunched it all into one night. -You keep getting sick because you keep making those special brews to turn your friends into darkened monster versions of themselves. i get it's your hobby but you gotta lay off it x3
41:33 No no you see it has to be “New Game+ (xNumber)” cause if it wasn’t they’d just put a bunch of pluses so NG+x5 would be New Game+++++ and it’d keep going and going until it took up the entire screen
6:46 I mean, I don't think a game being RUclips friendly should ever be a gauge of anything in a game. I know it was just a small random point to say how much swearing there is but that just seems off to me, it's not a comment you'd make about a good game like stick of truth (at least you wouldn't say it is a true downside of the game) even though it's 100% not RUclips friendly.
I don't really think your comparison is apt, first of all that's a south park game everyone would know from the get go it has a crap ton of foul language, secondly that's not an indie horror game. indie horror games have been the bread and butter of let's players for as long as I can remember, the RUclips scene has come to make or break a games entire reputation and popularity. if you want an indie horror game to be successful you get in front of let's players. The point is said content in the game might make it harder to do that.
@@LavenderTea-lr3hc I also agree with that it shouldn't be a factor at all. If you catering to streamers and RUclipsrs, you cater to the 1% while leaving all other customers into the dust. Not to mention that the games would be incredibly sanitized, given how strict RUclips is.
i do at the very least find the look or rather the artstyle and the premise of the game interesting (even if the humans designs feel off to me) however i do like a lot the mutated animals designs, to bad that like only 1/3 of what makes a good game
To give the game some credit, while tje gun doesnt have a crosshair on screen, it does use sights aiming, which I assume they did because it requires you to not jostle the gun around and takes more than a split second to aim properly, therefore I imagine they thought it would create tension during high stress moments. But if you have ever dabbled in modern shooters sights aiming is pretty common.
My guilty pleasure are zoo shows, and it would be kinda cool to have a game in the perspective of a zoo show where an injured animal was taken in to be cared for before proper release back into the wild. But then something is wrong with the animal. Perhaps a crew member catches whatever the animal is going through, and as the crew moves on to record other zookeepers and areas of the zoo the infection spreads. Idk just spitballing
I was thinking honestly that the story would progress over multiple nights, and that Paul would already be a zookeeper who discovers the parasite accidentally, and when he tells Doc, doc feigns worry and concern, only to reveal he was apart of the whole thing, making Paul have to chose whether to save the animals and find the cure, join doc and help him with the parasite studies, or kill everyone. I mean more results could happen, but i hate how "in your face" the story was. You already know that Doc is a bad guy, i wanted suspense, drama, mystery!
When I played it last, the blood stayed in the syringe and you had to turn it in before collecting more. Based on this footage its going into the inventory. If this is more recent thats a welcome change. Also the mutant tranaformation used to happen behind a static screen.
My favorite sub genre of horror is body horror. My favorite trope of body horror is infection that leads to the very kind of body fuckery Zoochosis does (Longer/Extra libs, mouths and eyes where they shouldnt be, etc.). AND THEY BOTCHED IT! I am sad.
I thought from the trailer you were just a night keeper and one night the animals got attacked by aliens or some experiments you are totally unaware of, and had to figure everything out without colonel Sanders there or the reporter girl.
I think everyone would be a lot less mad if they had released the game into early access, that way players knew they would be getting something this unpolished. It would show they were still trying to deliver the product they promised while allowing them more time to finish
Ahh I remember when I saw the trailers for this game, I was SO excited, but then I saw the actual game... I'm really sad for the devs. So many people were EXTREMELY hyped for the game and I think the fans themselves set huge expectations towards it, which then resulted in even huger disappointments. It must be really hard for the devs to go from being hyped to now listening almost all bad things about the game. Yes, the trailers messed up, but I also think the publishers could've had something to do with it and once people started hyping the game up and making their own assumptions, corrections couldn't be made due to NDAs. Recently something similar-ish happened in Cult of The Lamb when the local coop update was rolled, adding a secondary main character to the Lamb; the Goat. It was said that the Goat would be playable in single player, both in promo posts and in the trailers. So many people assumed that it means at the start of the game you'll get to choose if you want to play as the Lamb or the Goat. But it turned out you could unlock Goat only after beating over half of the game, and that they're not even a second character, but a decorative cosmetic you put over the Lamb, and you cannoy visually use other capes as the Goat (capes provide various bonuses and each has a different design; the Goat is basically one of the capes and Goat cannot visually wear other capes, although can use their bonuses). It's not been changed that you can play as the Goat since the start of the game, but the entire game will still call you "Lamb", and you can't change the cape. I emailed the devs about it, especially about the part where it was not communicated that the Goat will have to be unlocked in very late game AND that it's just a cosmetic cape, despite being heavily hyped up and they said that it was due to NDAs and them legally not being able to say more about the Goat.
Ok i know the game is disliked a lot BUT I LOVE IT SO MUCH its stupid and i love it i got the true ending i used to hate the game but once i didn’t take it seriously i love it, its stupid but i love it (gotten to the point where im called number 1 zoochosis fan in a friend server (also yes i know the games not perfect) but i love all the characters (besides doc) and i respect your opinions on the game also thanks for listing pros instead of just say game bad :)
I don’t know why but every time I see a human character make any facial movements or talk in the game, it’s like watching the resident evil 8 cutscenes with the facial expressions cranked to 100. it’s slightly unsettling and kinda funny
I think the setting is great, its just that the story let it down. You should have been a journalist investigating strange things happening in a zoo going from paddock to paddock as you unravel the mystery of whats going on as things get worse and worse. Outlast, but in a zoo. Not Zoo Tycoon but spooky.
I'll be honest, when it first came out I didn't have much of a problem with Zoochosis. Sure, it was unpolished and the lack of trailer content a little disappointing (I was looking forward to grotesque transformations and the monsters actually being able to leave the enclosures, and even more parasite related events in and around the facility), but I didn't mind the campy dialogue (sometimes a little campiness adds to the charm of a horror scenario) or that more than half of the kit went unexplained, since Doc's initial dialog did imply you had to be more proactive with figuring your way around, so I wrote it off as "Oh the developers want you to look around and figure stuff out! Ok!". It would have definitely been nice to have had less predictability to the mutations since it ruins some of the tense atmosphere, and I do wish the duration of the gameplay had been a little more lengthy... But considering where these developers started off, I still think this was a major leap in honing in their game dev skills. Especially with the artistic aspect, the modelling and the sound design. Maybe in the future the game will look and run leagues better once the developers are finally satisfied with it, maybe it won't. At the end of the day I think they learned a valuable lesson and will be a little better prepared for future projects (balancing ambition and capability while also challenging themselves will hopefully make for a less mixed experience for potential players).
6:18-6:22 Ah, yes. I know that. That's called Hungarian😂 We love to curse even when we aren't in a frustrated or stressed mood, it's the DNA of our language. At least where I grew up, apparently there are regions where they ban you for the lesser cursing words for 8 hours, even when you just express your frustration and not point it at someone (I talk from experience. Imagine getting banned from your local chat just because you dared to express yourself with a damn at the end of a sentence. And afterward I was the bad guy. Logical😂)
*Swears in Scottish* It's a rarity to come across a Scot that doesn't throw a swear or insult in a sentence, haha! I should know, as everyone around me was always surprised to hear me swear because it wasn't a habit for me. The Scottish slang has grown on me though the years though and I've got quite a potty mouth now. XD
@@queefcheif9306 I believe it’s cause the lead writer passed away during development and they weren’t able to recover from it due to the time constraints
As someone that played the game when it released, i want to add that in the first version you couldn't recharge with R, in fact the game didn't tell you could recharge using a buttom, the game instructions was unsing the Pda thingy to recharge from your inventory, i played like 3 or 4 hours like this, until before enidng the call with my friend since i was frustated for having to reset the game 3 times beacuse of bugs, i joking started pressing some buttons showing that there wasn't one, at some point i said "imagine that the recharge button is the same for shooting" and pressed left click, the next thing that happens is that my character make a recharge animation, i was so shokend and angry, i stopped playing the game for the day.
i really would’ve liked this game to be a more drawn out observational kind of horror, like coming back for multiple days and seeing the slow progression of symptoms rather than going from almost entirely normal to horrifically disfigured in the span of a few minutes. that was honestly more what i was expecting, the trailers made it feel like we would be gradually recognizing warning signs with much more suspense. its really unfortunate to see such an incredible concept be so poorly executed.
Genuinely really disappointed this is how the game turned out, the game's graphics and character designs look breathtaking, yet the game itself just isn't living up to the promises made
oh my gosh am a ahead! lets gooo. realy loved the vibe and everthing of this game when i saw the trailer. rather sad when i saw the gameplay was just... not there
One thing worth noting, is I am not sure parasites gotten from animals you killed moved around like the ones you cure. I could be wrong but that may be a reward for curing the animals.
Really sucks how unstable this game turned out to be. The models of the animals look great imo, but like you said, they do not outweigh the insane number of flaws. The whole "you can't get all animals unless you replay several times" sucks as well, and again like you said, the new game+ should really just unlock all of em cause that's typically what a new game+ gives, along extra lore or faster gameplay
I feel bad for clapperhands, they keep trying and failing to make a good game, and I can see the passion in the game, even if the gameplay isn’t the best. May Alexander Dagan rest in peace.
When i first heard of the game, i was excited, because i was expecting a full, open world zoo for the player to explore. I expected the player to be an entirely normal zookeeper caught off guard by a strange infection- then i saw a playthrough for the first time and was immensely disappointed. The enclosures are just connected by a train, instead of being able to walk around and explore, and the whole thing is orchestrated by a nefarious company. It really killed the "The Thing" vibe for me. I thought it would be more of a story of an immensely concerned zookeeper trying their best to care for and cure the animals they care about. Instead its just some guy.
It's sad to see Zoochosis be so underwhelming, seeing how the trailer made the game looked so enticing.
Yeah, the trailer made it seem like any animal could turn at any moment and one of them implied that the protagonist was close to the animals, which makes their mutation even more dreadful.
Yea genuinely. Im not even really that mad more severely disappointed since I purposefully waited before buying to first watch others’ review so I managed to save myself, but I was so, so excited for the launch and was really bummed that it came out half baked. Genuine biggest letdown of the year, but hey that’s really just the way the games industry works these days and it doesn’t seem like it was intentionally bad, just failed to live up expectations. I feel bad for all the people who bought it day 1 though, I would’ve been a lot more pissed if I did
@@midgematic8659 Since many indie horror games are inspired by current horror games, maybe we could hope that someone makes a similar game based off of the trailer, it could be really cool. A nice concept would that there was a virus that had spread around, our main character zookeeper only sees his animals as friends, it wants to protect them. There is cure but it will take X amount of days to get to the zoo. Until then he’ll need to use a medicine that slows down the transformation though there’s only a limited amount of vials. From there, there are a lot of ways to take the horror
I heard that there was actually way more both done and planned but the guy responsible has a falling out with the others somehow and they just destroyed all the work and cut it down to what it is now. Take this with a grain of Salt of course, I read this in the comments of a guy making proper walk cycles for the animals
@@lydiagalantmotherfactually, one of the main writers died while developing the title, and since this is people’s whole livelihoods on the line, they couldn’t stop development or delay the game and kept on rolling with the punches and trying to save whatever they can while grieving
Part of me thinks that Doc's frequent swearing and stilted dialog was intentional. It feels like he was meant to come off as sort of weird and off-kilter, trying too hard to be casual and friendly, but the voice actor wasn't properly directed. However, the terrible audio editing does kinda make it seem like its purely a result of incompetence.
Also a note, but the term "zoochosis" was invented by an anti-zoo group. Its just a portmanteau of "zoo" and "psychosis", and these symptoms exclusively occur in animals that are poorly treated and/or not given proper enrichment, not just any captive animal. I think its important for people to know this, since a lot of people will just google the term and take the first result at face value.
@@SissypheanCatboy i feel like thatll just backfire for the animal rights. as it kinda just paints it something that just happens instead of something the zoo can do to improve the animals well being
@@theshuman100 Yes, well, people like that aren't truly that invested in the actual well-being of animals. They're far more worried about their own moral and ethical compass. I doubt most of them are willfully malignant, but to people like that good intentions are the same as good deeds. As long as it makes them feel good, then it was the right choice, and anyone trying to explain otherwise is just another adversary.
Yeah, I actually liked how weird and offputting Doc was at the beginning of the game; only later did the dialogue get too stilted and unreal.
arguably, humans have also displayed zoochosis
@@Romanticoutlaw I mean, thats just psychosis.
I sincerely hope a future indie developer takes the concept of a zoo-based horror game and does it more justice than this game or Zoonomaly did. It's such a potent idea and it's sad to see two viral games this year that mostly wasted it imo.
Agreed - just imagine how many different kinds of animal/monster designs you can shove in here and NOT have it be so out of nowhere just from the setting alone. Heck you don't even need to do that - you simply need all the animals to escape at night with some guy stuck inside trying to just make it through - that can be scary enough on it's own.
Definitely, cool concept, shit games. )=
Yeah its such a good idea that it doesn't even rely on supernatural circumstances. You could make a horror game set in a zoo where all the animals are just normal animals but they escape or something and it would still have so much potential
@reedlewis2968 totally, have YOU picked a fight with a gorilla? Or an elephant? Terrifying man.... I'd love to see some purple incel wannabe take THAT. 🦍🐘😂
@@reedlewis2968 Huge agree. Just being stalked or chased by a lion or a gorilla at night would be terrifying alone.
I could see this being something that gets a REALLY cool remake/reimagining in like, 10 years. The game obviously has problems but it’s hard to deny it’s a big step up from their last. Could be the start of a huge glow up story
@@Eddiefrb Eddiefrb?!?!
God, I hope so.
The concept of animals mutating/turning into these horrific versions of themselves while you’re trying to be a normal zookeeper is way too good a concept to throw away, and my god these DESIGNS - _mwah_ perfect
If we saw the monster sooner, and Paul wasn't so oblivious to how suspicious Doc is acting, the game would be just THAT much better.
@@Tyler-q3k I couldn't get past the stolen meat block and human grinding machine. I was already suspending my disbelief over our oblivious protagonist. But that level of campy story telling is not what I got from the trailers. Just threw off the whole vibe.
@rutyqutykandi1361 that's what I'm saying! He gets knocked out by his new "boss" 5 seconds into the game! And the steps required to get the "good" ending are so specific and convoluted, that it doesn't feel worth it.
Because of my great priorities, I'm dissapointed that you dont interact with the animals according to their natural behaviours. Especially with the gorillas, with them having such complex social cues and also being INCREDIBLY strong zookeepers have to be extra careful with them and even take measures to have them be inside while their enclosures are cleaned. Just walking up and taking a blood sample is NOT happening.
Buuut that'd also be VERY complicated to implement and obviously not neccessary. I'm just an animal behaviour nerd.,
Honestly? It would add some much-needed variety to the gameplay loop. This enclosure plays like a stealth game (need to sneak around without being spotted or waking them up), that one is a puzzle game (lure them into lockable areas or devices to treat them safely), etc. It would even make the ones where you *can* just walk up & pet the animals feel like a nice break.
As a fellow zoology nerd, I agree. It'd add some variety to the gameplay and an additional threat outside the monsters. Just because an animal isn't a carnivore doesn't mean it isn't dangerous, after all!
I expected that gorilla to just vaporize Paul.
I agree, it would have been interesting if they added females and baby gorillas as well.
I mean there no point in keeping the game easy to make if no ones gonna play it because it's boring so they really should do this
It's really sad how this went, I was so excited for a zoo version of The Thing, where I would have to determine what enclosure was possibly infected.
but instead it's every single one has one infected every single time.
And you never really investigate. It triggers regardless and finding out which one it infected is basically useless
And it's always the same exact trigger, it could've been timed depending on which type of parasite it is, but it triggers as soon as you get the diagnostics for the animals and make medicine.
Honestly, if they DID write this like The Thing, it would be at least decent, also Paul is kinda dumb, if your new boss knocks you out on your first day, and takes your fucking phone, to work at a fucking ZOO, it's PROBABLY bad news.
Unfortunately, even if it did lean more into The Thing inspiration people would still complain about the tedious zookeeper gameplay. I think people were too enamored by the concept and trailer that nobody thought playing as a zookeeper would be pretty boring until the fake animal revealed itself.
Mom, this zoo is kinda awful, can we go back to Fazbear’s again?
Son, no Fazbear's today, their pizza is overpriced, instead we're going on a *MAGIC TOUR IN PLAYTIME CO FACTORY JUST FOR 4.99!!!*
Cmon sweetie, the tickets were free for 3 and under, just smile and pretend to be happy
I think maybe the animation studio might be open?
With all theses places the kid is going I'm wondering how they didn't die or something
@ViniciusDiasissy He didn't die, after, ahem, *the bite* , our friendly neighbour agreed to help him heal, because he said he has a hospital in his basement 🥰🥰
Apparently they're reworking the game to fix the issues that the game currently has, I wouldn't be surprised if its an complete overhaul.
I hope so. It needs it.
@@sugarp1e174 Agreed.
I don't think anything short of "throw it all out and start over" is going to fix this mess, sadly.
@@GigasGMX That's my definition of a complete overhaul. Basically what No Man's Sky did; the game's unrecognizable to how it was at launch.
@GigasGMX We thought the same way about No Man's Sky and they fixed the game. Let them cook first before retasting the meal.
I *think* they were trying to make Doc feel like a clinical psychopath who's trying to sound normal, but failing and being unsettling in the process, but it doesn't really work.
i wonder how much the game wouldve benifited from a more normal zoo layout. being able to spot a sick animal through the glass as you are on your way to checking up on another animal so that now you have to put a mental note what enclosure to do next.
I feel like Zoochosis' writing is yet another victim of developers trying to write games in languages in which they are not fluent. What's wrong with making games in your own language? Why does *everything* have to be in English?
On second thought, there's some spots where the narrative itself is clearly stupid, rather than just the writing. Like Paul stealing mystery animal meat on his first day at his well-paid new job WHILE WEARING A BODYCAM.
For REAL. Player character has an incurable case of "why would he fucking do that" syndrome. In addition to the whole parasite thing.
In what world is zoo meat (which even if it WASN'T human meat, would generally be unsafe for human consumption) better than hot dogs and Kraft Dinner? Especially when you're ON CAMERA STEALING IT.
And of course the blatant sexploitation of the journalist.
I mean that's a nice thought but it's extremely unrealistic, do you expect them to market this extremely story based game to exclusively people who speak Uzbek?
5:17 - 5:45 The only reminder that you’re watching through a bodycam is the static that takes up the screen sometimes. Usually after a mutated animal attacks Paul.
6:48 - 7:34 THANK YOU! I'm *so* sick of people saying the game uses AI voices.
tbh i only thought they were using AI voices because the credits orignally didnt included the voicr actors
@@vendybirdsvadl7472 I saw some people who thought that for the same reason on Twitter. The devs said it was a visual error and I don’t think a lot of people bought that; even I questioned it because how does an error like that even happen?
@@sugarp1e174 Yeah the AI voice allegations were just effing stupid. People literally just scream "OMG AI!!!" whenever there's mid voice-acting now and it's not cute.
@@anobody4606 people scream ai whenever anything is bad nowadays, like great i already knew my art is crap but the crap art is mine and mine alone😭
@6Shots_ofEspresso If it makes you feel any better I would take subpar art made from an actual human than anything made by AI
Not to mention I got a feeling your art would look better than anything I can do.
honestly part of the completely alien dialogue for me is paul just ignoring his wife standing out in the rain, even telling doc NOT to tell her she can leave, which is just insane to me as much as stealing animal food for his sick child
not only that, it's stealing mystery meat on the first day of the job while having a bodycam strapped to him
19:26 I spot that Frost in the corner! Nice, I love seeing others who enjoy those animated shorts Tales of Avantris puts out :D
Another fan spotted
Definitely a fun channel to watch
Fans spotted
My life is now complete
I’m so glad a few others noticed and knew the reference! Shoocharu is fucking hilarious and the perfect animator for Legends of Avantris shenanigans.
Imagine your beloved dog/cat gets sick, and you know it has something to do with a private animal collection/closed zoo/research facility. You're a vet/zoologist/biologist of some kind who has no other option than to break into the zoo to see if you can figure out what infected your pet. As the night goes on, you uncover mutations and use your knowledge to figure out a cure, gather evidence to take down the owners of the zoo, and save your pet while surviving and not getting caught
I'd like to see that story with this premise and a polished game
It's a shame it's so bad, zoo keeping can really lend inself to interesting gameplay, and there's not a lot out there (mostly zoo tycoon style management)
I'm not one to play horror games but I really think there's potential here for a multiplayer version. Even if it's something like one player being the parasite and tasked with infecting animals and other players have to wipe it out or loose trying. Or just have a 4 player tag team with all areas being accessible and the goal being to heal all the animals etc.
If Lethal Company has taught me anything, it's that the best horror and humour comes from the players themselves, and a good way to create a multiplayer horror game is to give people ways of messing with each other alongside the incentives to work together. (That way when the scares wear off there's still the humour to fall back on.)
When playing Zoo Tycoon and removing all fences to let the animals run amuck is scarier than your game you know you fucked up
Hey dusky - just wanted to let ya know I appreicate you.
Zoochosis? more like- uh- mid-chosis
gottem
@@voyd234 LEFT WING DESTROYED
@scottcaramel wha
Zoochosis? More like Zoo-no-sis.
More like Bore Ragnarok
@@ridhosamudro2199 hey get thor ragnarok out your damn mouth
I like how fecal matter is apart of the warnings
My god the "Hi I'm Paul" clip gave me an unexpected dose of nostalgia
I always thought it was "Hi! I'm Pa!"
Honestly, I think if someone could have another crack at the whip on this, we could have something truly special. I even think the same company could do it if they paid attention to the criticism - the animals as well as their mutations are absolutely ace. Considering all the patches, I'm willing to hold out hope. Maybe some different processes to make different cures, some rewards for saving all the animals, greater direction and we'd have something truly awesome.
Another issue, I think, with the cursing is they do it wrong. "A hundred thousand fucking american dollars" doesn't sound right; it's not the right word. "A hundred thousand god-damn american dollars" would flow a lot better. There's probably some obscure grammatical rule that shapes this, probably something about how fucking is a verb. Anyways, I'm just pedantic about swearing
Interesting. I was inclined to agree with your take, but I'd disagree with your example (to me, "goddamn" sounds more out of place there than "fucking" does.). It's probably a regional and generational thing which swears you'd use where - which means what may sound natural to one person might sound off to another (for example, "goddamn" isn't very common where I'm from, so maybe that's why it sounds out-of-place to me while sounding better to you).
No real conclusion I mostly just thought it was interesting how different our views on the "right" swears to use were.
I think it's also the placement in the sentence. Putting a swear between "a hundred" and "thousand" would have probably worked better to emphasize the amount. Or even between "a" and "hundred" for the same reason.
Well, I feel bad for jumping on the AI voice bandwagon when this game came out. It was probably due to the stilted dialogue that made me think that and seeing another person's comment on 8-BitRyan's playthrough of the game, plus a little bit of a bias from your Sparky Marky video. I will also say that I am completely wrong in the fact that Clapperhead Studios is at least trying to fix the game, because I thought they would just abandon it after release. However, now hearing Doc's voice actor outside of this game, it kinda gives me a vibe of if John Goodman narrated Thomas and Friends, since the voice actor's voice does sound like John Goodman.
I really hope that Tim Stephenson gets more and *better* video game work after this because I could listen to him all day. Just... I think I'd prefer to listen to his gutter protector ad on loop than actually play Zoochosis.
I lowkey wanna make a dark comic for Zoochosis, where like,,, the main character is paul and it's just the game but actually good and dark and nice writing and actual spookiness...
@@critter_core I’d like to see it if you do make it
Would love to see such a thing. Cause the game did not deliver it's promise TwT
Was so hoping to even see them just mutate but it's just a static transition which was so lame.
been a while, no? also, it's sad to see that after all you said about the devs (in the sparky video), doesn't seem like things got better :P.
and also, hope you feel better soon, lad. hopefully you'll soon get 50k subs ^^
The best way to improve this game is to play it while listening to the theme music from a different zoo game. Zoo Tycoon, Planet Zoo, and Putt Putt Saves the Zoo (the topiary creatures) all have great choices
Putt Putt is such a fun choice
One thing I think would have made the game better would be changing how you travel to the exhibits, I think what most people thought the game would’ve been you could go to any exhibit at any time. I think having a Vidal system where you can see how all the animals are doing and they could tern at almost any time, and instead of having the game be based on how many exhibits you experience, and instead have it be time based, where you have to keep the animals alive until morning and having you health be a major thing to keep track of, so you are able to make it till morning. This can also make the researching section of the animals more useful, we could be told which one is sick but were not told which animal is which and we could get some clues on what to look for in the animal and when we enter the area a timer could start till the animal mutates and have the timer be about 10 ish minutes before the mutation, and maybe have a consequent for letting the animals die could be something like the parasites spreading far quicker. This doesn’t change the story that much but it improves the gameplay significantly, this may be a bit of a tall order but I think this is the game we would’ve wanted and thanks for reading this super long comment about a mutant zoo horror game and if you think these ideas are interested or would’ve made the game better, consider giving this comment a like and maybe give you own ideas of what would’ve made the game better?
This game is alarmingly similar to Security Breach.
Hear me out:
The trailers tease a gorgeous-looking scary game about exploration, problem-solving, and uncovering a deeper mystery.
What we get is a game that, while it looks absolutely stunning, has underbaked mechanics, basically no story worth investing in, and so, so, so many bugs they couldn't fix before launch.
I wonder if the problems that plagued Security Breach's development also affected the Zoochosis Team. The outcomes just feel too similar to be a coincidence.
I was so looking forward to this game only be horribly underwhelmed. They where so focused on the gameplay elements they forgot actually MAKE THE GAME.
I'm really enjoying the game for what it is, it's fun trying to pick different things to see what ending I get.
Also I was messing around with the UV light pretending to look for parasites and instead found hidden codes for the lockers.
You what
Wow love your character!! Found you just scrolling around and this vid was super well made. Heard about this game but never got around to trying it. This was rly cool explaining it all
5:55 I'm sorry, did that bodycam just blackout?
Can we talk about how the characters' mouth movements look like those mods that exaggerate facial animations?
I WAS LITERALLY THINKING THIS it looks like they set the automatic facial animations just a smidge too high so everything opens wider than it should
Get well soon Dusky! Hope you don’t mutate into a monster!
I feek really bad for the devs of this game. Their screen writer dying must habe really affected the development of the game... And the ai claims must really hurt. It looks like they are really trying to fix the game, but they should have taken more time to release
From the very first trailer, I thought it was about a zoo keeper that was either old or new doing his daily rounds taking care of the animals then noticing something horrifying. Then he's trying to find a cure for the killer parasite quickly as possible before the mutated animals get out of the Zoo an reek havoc. I was sincerely disappointed when I saw others play it an learned how bad it was.
Man Zoocosis had so potential after the trailer, only to be wasted 😔
luckily playtime with percy had me hooked
The wild thing is? A horror game with terrible voice direction doesn’t have to suck. The very same language barrier etc. made resident evil 1 and silent hill 2 huge successes. The fact that no one is talking like a human can hit the uncanny valley and linger there. Unfortunately, it’s to easy to see what they were going for and the tropes are so stale (Doc is literally just movie William Afton) that it never really unsettles you. Plus the game is so short that kinda slow burn unease would be pointless anyway.
I was so hyped after the trailers, thinking it would be similar to FNAF Pizza Sim in the horror-but-also-franchise-manager game
Instead it was just exposition and exposition and zero tension because you can't die and point and shoot boss "battles".
I think really if you want a version of this game that actually relies on horror you’d have to stick with either subtle storytelling or less task-based gameplay. I’ve had such severe brainrot over what this game could’ve been that I’ve tried reworking it to see if I can find any way to redeem the storyline (though my version cuts out a lot of characters, and the Mother).
You still play as Paul Connelly, working at Pine Valley Zoo in order to help support your wife and daughter, although you are a trained exotic animals veterinarian. You’ve been brought in from a different zoo to help treat sick animals, as this particular zoo seems to consistently have issues with its animals becoming unwell. You meet your boss, who ensures that your vaccinations are in order, before mentioning that you need a specific vaccination as there’s a possibility that you’ll be working with penguins, and you agree. After signing the contract, you’re led to a professional-looking laboratory/veterinary clinic and given your ‘vaccine’ (which obviously, like the game is an injection of a parasite, although not one that’s so alien like).
You begin the gameplay on Monday, and this portion of the game is tutorial-based, as in-game, your boss wants to see whether or not you will prove to be a reliable asset to the zoo, and most importantly to curing the animals, by allowing you to learn game mechanics by treating birds, such as lovebirds and parrots. I’d use the tutorial section to set up the seedy nature of employers towards the animals there - seeing these types of animals as disposable. The game mechanics specifically would be similar to those already in the game: seeing if the animals are eating, taking temperatures, and taking blood and fecal samples, but with a change - when an animal is flagged as being sick, the play has to work out whether the illness is bacterial, viral, or parasitic based on the samples already gathered, or new tasks that will narrow down the diagnosis. As the tutorial progresses, the player would be able to treat Birds of Prey, and during this section of the tutorial, the animals begin to show symptoms of zoochosis (linking the gameplay to the name) as their enclosures are clearly not stimulating enough for them, although the player character doesn’t initially register this as a potential cause of the illnesses.
Days 2 and 3 (Tuesday and Wednesday) would be where I’d have the gameplay begin to pick up, with your character being able to treat small mammals, such as meerkats, fennec foxes, and red pandas. The player continues checking the animals’ health, noting the symptoms of zoochosis, until they find a meerkat female displaying unusually heightened levels of aggression, even partaking in self-mutilation. When the player runs tests, the animal presents as having some form of infection, that has physical symptoms that match a bacte infection, but the animal’s behavioural symptoms make no sense with the diagnosis - the player character even considers the possibility of the animal suffering from some level of zoochosis. Treating the animal anyway, the player finishes their tasks for the day.
Wednesday opens with the player returning to the meerkat’s cage, only to find that the meerkat has killed multiple of its cagemates. Here the player has to involve their boss, who, if the player chooses to bring up the conditions the animals are kept in, will dismiss it, and say that their enclosures have been approved by quote unquote ‘specialists’. The boss then captures the meerkat, and implies that they’re taking it to have it put to sleep, telling the player that sometimes things like this happen, and if the general public knew what a cruel and vicious place the animal kingdom really was, then they’d never even dream of visiting zoos, making a final comment that the player has otherwise shown good capability, and will be allowed to begin curing a section of the zoo of their choice - told to pick an area they specialise in. You continue your day, although the small mammals seem to be acting more aggressively towards you than usual, and as night falls, you swear that you feel as if they’re hunting you, or at least, something lurking in the dark is. As the player exits from the final enclosure, they catch a glimpse something much bigger than the animals they’ve been looking after so far, something with too many eyes, too many legs, the sound of breathing strangely disjointed, as if whatever this creature is breathing from two mouths. As quickly as this encounter starts, it’s over, leaving both the character and the player confused and baffled as what just happened. Once the player returns to the veterinary centre, they’re given a choice as to which area of the zoo they wish to focus on from four options: Big cats, Apes, Savannah animals, and Arctic animals.
Thursday gameplay occurs the same as Tuesday and Wednesday gameplay - there are multiple sick animals, with one or two presenting with symptoms of zoochosis, alongside other symptoms, leading to the player not being able to diagnose what the animals are suffering from acutely enough to treat them. They bring this up to their boss, who tasks them with the task of trying to identify the source of this infection, and potentially produce a cure, but of course as the character is only an exotic animals vet, this requires abilities beyond their skillset. They stay longer, tasked with studying the creatures’ behaviours over the course of Thursday to Saturday but are free to explore more behind the scenes areas of the zoo, which, if done thoroughly enough, will lead to the player finding clues and notes that point to what is actually going on (the zoo is actually an undercover animal testing facility, bio-engineering a pathogen/parasite that can induce psychotic behaviour in both humans and animals. The people testing the pathogen need to see how animals infected respond to people, how well the parasite spreads, and whether there’s any human/animal transmission. The vaccine you were given at the start of the game was actually the parasite, and as the game progresses, the effects of this manifest.) Each day, the player is given a new set of animals to care for, and at night, the infected animals become hostile towards the player, mutating into grotesque versions of themselves seen in the game. The player has to navigate surviving these mutations, collecting samples from them, as well as testing the other animals in order to find some sort of vaccine or cure to the parasitic infection. There are times that the player should begin to question whether or not the mutations are real or if the player is taking the route of working out what’s going on in the zoo, whether they’re just a side effect of their own infection.
Saturday is the final day of the game, and the one where the player must face the most hostile/dangerous animal in their chosen specialty. The night mode is especiall hard, as the other mutations they’ve had to deal with have escaped from their enclosures - the player is being stalked through a dark zoo at night, with no clear way to dispatch or fight back against the horrific animal abominations chasing them, with a plan for a cure that either has no effectiveness or has the possibility to put an end to this animal testing nightmare, depending on the player’s level of knowledge. The game ends with the player injecting themselves with the cure, resulting in a ‘good’ or a bad ending.
In the bad ending, the player is not cured, and is forced to watch their own body transform into something Lovecraftian, not even human, as their body succumbs to the infection.
In the ‘good’ ending, the player is able to cure themselves, and sets out to cure the afflicted animals, but is prevented by their boss, who applauds them, and offers them a choice: they can either join their team of researchers, and contribute to the animal testing, which while goes against the character’s moral code, would provide them with enough of an income that their family can live comfortably, or the boss will be forced to kill them. If the player chooses to join the researchers, the game ends with the player given a small insight into the true exent of the underground operation. If they refuse, the boss leaves them to the infected animals, which are not shown to be either simply psychotic animals, or truly the grotesque mutations seen earlier in the game.
That’d be my idea for zoochosis!! Feel free to let me know what you think in the replies!!
Just wanted to say, I absolutely love your character drawings/sprites! 😍
The color palette is bright and fun to look at, and expertly avoids the “DeviantArt Oc syndrome” (of over saturation) we’re all familiar with.
🌟Subscribed!🌟
Honestly, to me the biggest disappointment for me is that the game doesn’t encourage you to care about the animals? Like using lethal injection should feel like a tragic last resort after you fail to save them, otherwise it just feels like ‘aight zombie shooting time’ to get to the end quicker.
I always thought it was weird you could "cure" animals that have several limbs, split bodies and complete mutations.
I just discovered this channel and I love your commentary and your avatar! I can't wait to watch more :D
I feel like once a team member died it kinda just sucked the motivation out of the team, and they had to put it out to make something back.
-One thing dataminers were able to find is that the writing was incomplete as there was supposed to be multiple nights that you were supposed to be at the zoo but with the death of the writer, the rest of the team crunched it all into one night.
-You keep getting sick because you keep making those special brews to turn your friends into darkened monster versions of themselves. i get it's your hobby but you gotta lay off it x3
41:33 No no you see it has to be “New Game+ (xNumber)” cause if it wasn’t they’d just put a bunch of pluses so NG+x5 would be New Game+++++ and it’d keep going and going until it took up the entire screen
6:46 I mean, I don't think a game being RUclips friendly should ever be a gauge of anything in a game. I know it was just a small random point to say how much swearing there is but that just seems off to me, it's not a comment you'd make about a good game like stick of truth (at least you wouldn't say it is a true downside of the game) even though it's 100% not RUclips friendly.
I don't really think your comparison is apt, first of all that's a south park game everyone would know from the get go it has a crap ton of foul language, secondly that's not an indie horror game. indie horror games have been the bread and butter of let's players for as long as I can remember, the RUclips scene has come to make or break a games entire reputation and popularity. if you want an indie horror game to be successful you get in front of let's players.
The point is said content in the game might make it harder to do that.
Exactly! Imagine how much less scary Fear and Hunger would be if it was made with youtubers in mind!
@@LavenderTea-lr3hc
I also agree with that it shouldn't be a factor at all. If you catering to streamers and RUclipsrs, you cater to the 1% while leaving all other customers into the dust.
Not to mention that the games would be incredibly sanitized, given how strict RUclips is.
@@LavenderTea-lr3hc you said my comparison is bad then went on a tangent about nothing that I said lol
i do at the very least find the look or rather the artstyle and the premise of the game interesting (even if the humans designs feel off to me) however i do like a lot the mutated animals designs, to bad that like only 1/3 of what makes a good game
To give the game some credit, while tje gun doesnt have a crosshair on screen, it does use sights aiming, which I assume they did because it requires you to not jostle the gun around and takes more than a split second to aim properly, therefore I imagine they thought it would create tension during high stress moments. But if you have ever dabbled in modern shooters sights aiming is pretty common.
I have a feeling that there were multiple versions of this game (or it was meant to be longer) and all the pieces got melded less-than-successfully.
Also, NDA's cannot stop you from reporting illegal activities.
My guilty pleasure are zoo shows, and it would be kinda cool to have a game in the perspective of a zoo show where an injured animal was taken in to be cared for before proper release back into the wild. But then something is wrong with the animal. Perhaps a crew member catches whatever the animal is going through, and as the crew moves on to record other zookeepers and areas of the zoo the infection spreads. Idk just spitballing
This was very interesting!! I didn't even know you COULD cure the mutated animals. I hope the devs can deliver on thier vision eventually.
18:45
Fish guy: oh brother this guy stinks
I’m glad you appeared in my recommended, you have such good content.
Madagascar on the Nintendo Gamecube clears this easily
...I am subscribing...JUST BECAUSE I love your character's design. But also, I love these kinds of videos to begin with. So, it's a win win.
Listening back to the game Themes, the 'mother' reminds me of happy meat farms
The game may not use ai but damn the animations are janky when the face doesn’t move except the mouth. Makes it horrifying in a different way lol
The best thing is the monster design by far.
The Giraffe mutant is so *perfect.*
I was thinking honestly that the story would progress over multiple nights, and that Paul would already be a zookeeper who discovers the parasite accidentally, and when he tells Doc, doc feigns worry and concern, only to reveal he was apart of the whole thing, making Paul have to chose whether to save the animals and find the cure, join doc and help him with the parasite studies, or kill everyone. I mean more results could happen, but i hate how "in your face" the story was. You already know that Doc is a bad guy, i wanted suspense, drama, mystery!
Swear to god Doc sounded like Markiplier. I really thought for a minute they got him to do voiceover work
When I played it last, the blood stayed in the syringe and you had to turn it in before collecting more. Based on this footage its going into the inventory. If this is more recent thats a welcome change.
Also the mutant tranaformation used to happen behind a static screen.
Thank you for the initial warning. It's very appreciated.
Doc saying Shit-Sucker has become my new vocal stim help
My favorite sub genre of horror is body horror. My favorite trope of body horror is infection that leads to the very kind of body fuckery Zoochosis does (Longer/Extra libs, mouths and eyes where they shouldnt be, etc.). AND THEY BOTCHED IT! I am sad.
I thought from the trailer you were just a night keeper and one night the animals got attacked by aliens or some experiments you are totally unaware of, and had to figure everything out without colonel Sanders there or the reporter girl.
I think everyone would be a lot less mad if they had released the game into early access, that way players knew they would be getting something this unpolished. It would show they were still trying to deliver the product they promised while allowing them more time to finish
Ahh I remember when I saw the trailers for this game, I was SO excited, but then I saw the actual game... I'm really sad for the devs. So many people were EXTREMELY hyped for the game and I think the fans themselves set huge expectations towards it, which then resulted in even huger disappointments. It must be really hard for the devs to go from being hyped to now listening almost all bad things about the game. Yes, the trailers messed up, but I also think the publishers could've had something to do with it and once people started hyping the game up and making their own assumptions, corrections couldn't be made due to NDAs.
Recently something similar-ish happened in Cult of The Lamb when the local coop update was rolled, adding a secondary main character to the Lamb; the Goat. It was said that the Goat would be playable in single player, both in promo posts and in the trailers. So many people assumed that it means at the start of the game you'll get to choose if you want to play as the Lamb or the Goat. But it turned out you could unlock Goat only after beating over half of the game, and that they're not even a second character, but a decorative cosmetic you put over the Lamb, and you cannoy visually use other capes as the Goat (capes provide various bonuses and each has a different design; the Goat is basically one of the capes and Goat cannot visually wear other capes, although can use their bonuses). It's not been changed that you can play as the Goat since the start of the game, but the entire game will still call you "Lamb", and you can't change the cape. I emailed the devs about it, especially about the part where it was not communicated that the Goat will have to be unlocked in very late game AND that it's just a cosmetic cape, despite being heavily hyped up and they said that it was due to NDAs and them legally not being able to say more about the Goat.
Feel better soon! ❤
Ok i know the game is disliked a lot BUT I LOVE IT SO MUCH its stupid and i love it i got the true ending i used to hate the game but once i didn’t take it seriously i love it, its stupid but i love it (gotten to the point where im called number 1 zoochosis fan in a friend server (also yes i know the games not perfect) but i love all the characters (besides doc) and i respect your opinions on the game also thanks for listing pros instead of just say game bad :)
I think you’d also like miraculous ladybug
@@callmeaprilroseorisha404…. no lol but i can see why you think that no offense to the joke:)
Not to sound rude but... You sound like you got brainwashed. Or sound like a kid.
Nah doc is the best, he's so badly written it's good
I get what you mean, I personally love My Lovely Daughter even though it's not that good of a game either
39:00 I want an hour long version of this
I don’t know why but every time I see a human character make any facial movements or talk in the game, it’s like watching the resident evil 8 cutscenes with the facial expressions cranked to 100. it’s slightly unsettling and kinda funny
I think the setting is great, its just that the story let it down. You should have been a journalist investigating strange things happening in a zoo going from paddock to paddock as you unravel the mystery of whats going on as things get worse and worse. Outlast, but in a zoo. Not Zoo Tycoon but spooky.
13:45 unity asset ahh looking Lamborghini Countach 😂
I'll be honest, when it first came out I didn't have much of a problem with Zoochosis. Sure, it was unpolished and the lack of trailer content a little disappointing (I was looking forward to grotesque transformations and the monsters actually being able to leave the enclosures, and even more parasite related events in and around the facility), but I didn't mind the campy dialogue (sometimes a little campiness adds to the charm of a horror scenario) or that more than half of the kit went unexplained, since Doc's initial dialog did imply you had to be more proactive with figuring your way around, so I wrote it off as "Oh the developers want you to look around and figure stuff out! Ok!". It would have definitely been nice to have had less predictability to the mutations since it ruins some of the tense atmosphere, and I do wish the duration of the gameplay had been a little more lengthy... But considering where these developers started off, I still think this was a major leap in honing in their game dev skills. Especially with the artistic aspect, the modelling and the sound design. Maybe in the future the game will look and run leagues better once the developers are finally satisfied with it, maybe it won't. At the end of the day I think they learned a valuable lesson and will be a little better prepared for future projects (balancing ambition and capability while also challenging themselves will hopefully make for a less mixed experience for potential players).
ty for putting no in the title, for ur honesty im watching this whole thing
This game needs more love.
6:18-6:22 Ah, yes. I know that. That's called Hungarian😂 We love to curse even when we aren't in a frustrated or stressed mood, it's the DNA of our language. At least where I grew up, apparently there are regions where they ban you for the lesser cursing words for 8 hours, even when you just express your frustration and not point it at someone (I talk from experience. Imagine getting banned from your local chat just because you dared to express yourself with a damn at the end of a sentence. And afterward I was the bad guy. Logical😂)
*Swears in Scottish* It's a rarity to come across a Scot that doesn't throw a swear or insult in a sentence, haha! I should know, as everyone around me was always surprised to hear me swear because it wasn't a habit for me. The Scottish slang has grown on me though the years though and I've got quite a potty mouth now. XD
Great video as always, well said
plot feels reaaally weirdly paced but its great with how the developers have been active
@@queefcheif9306 I believe it’s cause the lead writer passed away during development and they weren’t able to recover from it due to the time constraints
As far as indie horror monster designs go it got one of the best.
As someone that played the game when it released, i want to add that in the first version you couldn't recharge with R, in fact the game didn't tell you could recharge using a buttom, the game instructions was unsing the Pda thingy to recharge from your inventory, i played like 3 or 4 hours like this, until before enidng the call with my friend since i was frustated for having to reset the game 3 times beacuse of bugs, i joking started pressing some buttons showing that there wasn't one, at some point i said "imagine that the recharge button is the same for shooting" and pressed left click, the next thing that happens is that my character make a recharge animation, i was so shokend and angry, i stopped playing the game for the day.
Ey, Dusky is back!
i really would’ve liked this game to be a more drawn out observational kind of horror, like coming back for multiple days and seeing the slow progression of symptoms rather than going from almost entirely normal to horrifically disfigured in the span of a few minutes. that was honestly more what i was expecting, the trailers made it feel like we would be gradually recognizing warning signs with much more suspense. its really unfortunate to see such an incredible concept be so poorly executed.
Genuinely really disappointed this is how the game turned out, the game's graphics and character designs look breathtaking, yet the game itself just isn't living up to the promises made
oh my gosh am a ahead! lets gooo. realy loved the vibe and everthing of this game when i saw the trailer. rather sad when i saw the gameplay was just... not there
One thing worth noting, is I am not sure parasites gotten from animals you killed moved around like the ones you cure. I could be wrong but that may be a reward for curing the animals.
Really sucks how unstable this game turned out to be. The models of the animals look great imo, but like you said, they do not outweigh the insane number of flaws. The whole "you can't get all animals unless you replay several times" sucks as well, and again like you said, the new game+ should really just unlock all of em cause that's typically what a new game+ gives, along extra lore or faster gameplay
I feel bad for clapperhands, they keep trying and failing to make a good game, and I can see the passion in the game, even if the gameplay isn’t the best. May Alexander Dagan rest in peace.
They should give up on game design and just become a modeling and animation studio, IMO.
I caught Zoochosis playing this game, wish me luck for my treatment 🤒🤧🤧😷😷
Having to spread zebra cheeks to stop it from attacking you sure is a choice they made o__o
When i first heard of the game, i was excited, because i was expecting a full, open world zoo for the player to explore. I expected the player to be an entirely normal zookeeper caught off guard by a strange infection- then i saw a playthrough for the first time and was immensely disappointed. The enclosures are just connected by a train, instead of being able to walk around and explore, and the whole thing is orchestrated by a nefarious company. It really killed the "The Thing" vibe for me. I thought it would be more of a story of an immensely concerned zookeeper trying their best to care for and cure the animals they care about. Instead its just some guy.
27:10
Girl what do you think Ironsights are for
Was looking for this comment
The game may be bad but I really love the infected designs, they are so good.
LET'S GOOOOOOOO, NEW DUSKY VIDEO!!!!
BRO I HAD A DREAM ABOUT ZOOCHOSIS
19:04
Snoo-pingas-usual