In this development update video you can see two brand new monsters you can have in your zoo:
So, a few more ways there for your zoo to go accidentally very badly wrong!
Also in that update is the addition of flowers and flower beds.
Not as eye-catching or as life-threatening as two new monsters, but you'll be able to decorate and add nice little areas to your zoo as you see fit. They'll take the edge of being surrounded by eldritch creatures all the time! Maybe. No guarantees.
More updates coming soon!
The Abaddon
The Abaddon is a new monster, and it's very strange.
Because it kinda needs to be seen in motion, here's the new development video:
The Abaddon is an underground monster, it shifts the entire terrain above it, but every now and then it rises to the surface and munches on meat. Very destructive even when it's not meaning to be, you'll need to invest in the new drillbit fences that dig deep into the earth's crust to keep the Abaddon caged, any other attempts will leave a trail of devestation behind it.
It's a pricey monster to buy and even more so to adequately house, but it's also one of the biggest and strangest monsters in the game so far.
More updates soon! Matt
Hot Tree Bile Shops and Wintery Improvements
Another development update showing off some more WIP features! Have a watch of the video: A mug of piping hot tree bile, who can forget its taste. You will not be able to. It is memorable. I know, these days people say that you can "just get it in a can" and that it's "just as good as straight from the tree stumps disgusting mouth." Those people are liars and they are scoundrels. You've got to drink it straight from the source:
Mmm. There's nothing quite like it.
Aside from building new shops that will placate the thirst of your zoo visitors in the middle of winter, winter itself is looking very pretty these days:
Snow falls and builds up all around, the zoo visitors come bundled in coats, hats and scarfs, and so on. It looks really nice at 60fps.
More updates coming soon! - Matt
The Electric Chair and The Joy Drinker Statue
Here's a brand new update about The Eldritch Zookeeper's development: There's a brand new electricity grid system in The Eldritch Zookeeper: See those yellow lines? Those are electric power lines running between all the lampposts and all the electric buildables in your zoo.
Where does the power come from? All those happy zoo visitors are now a non-polluting power source for your zoo expansion! Congratulations to each and every one of them. Whenever they walk beneath the statue's open hand, their joy is turned into useful charge, and will zip about your electrical grid to wherever it needs to go. The Electric Chair is the first new powered device that needs a strong electrical input. Recharge your staff automatons in what we really, really hope is a non-painful way of getting them busy after depleting their battery. There's no reliable evidence that the automatons feel pain and there's certainly no way they can complain about it if they do, so it's fine.
The automatons can also hold scythes and cut the grass for you! How helpful of them.
Check out that video for more info! More updates on the way, stay tuned... - Matt
Stone Paths, Grass and a Big Scythe
Here's a brand new update about The Eldritch Zookeeper's development: [previewyoutube="LNAtJuTIFVI;full"] Stone paths! At long last. And they look so gooood. It's taken a lot of tweaking to get the construction of the stone paths feeling right. You sort of 'paint' the path onto the ground as you run about, and that looks and sounds really satisfying. I'd like to add a few different path variations that you can choose between, and will change the look of your zoo pretty drastically.
Grass that grows is the other Big New Thing, and if you let your zoo get a bit out of control in that regard, it's a bit of a mess: So you've got to invest in a scythe - a new item! - and get cutting, or else the visitors are going to start complaining at the state of your zoo. And if you happen to scythe a visitor or two on the way? Well, this is The Eldritch Zoo, not The Safety Zoo, what do you expect?
Check out that video to see all of that in motion! More updates on the way, stay tuned... - Matt
Magical (and Helpful) Automatons
Doo doo doo doo (that's the sound I think it makes to itself as it runs along.)
I've added staff you can hire to help you with your zookeeping, they're these big battery-with-legs-and-arms-and-a-lantern-as-a-head things, and they're pretty helpful:
[previewyoutube="JeJs5hBSzCs;full"] The gameplay issue I allude to that video is that maintaining big zoos was increasingly difficult, the larger they got. It wasn't hard to build a big zoo, it was keeping it going that was challenging. At a certain point there were just too many monsters needing food, too many litter bins needing emptying, just too many jobs for one player to manage. Because, remember, if a monster goes hungry, after a little while they get agitated, then angry, and they start breaking stuff and killing everything they can get their teeth/claws/tentacles into.
But with staff to do all the busywork for you, you can keep expanding and building, and investing in new monsters and redesigning your zoo without having to do a full-zoo circuit to keep everything going. Of course, you have to invest in these staff first and scale up the right way, but the automatons are already really helping.
As I say in the video, there's a few more things I think these automatons can help with, and I'd like to make them upgradable and more efficient. But it's a good start!
Another development update, as I keep working on the game every day. Last time, you may recall, I showed off the shiny, new Mad Science Research Lab. Even though there was a decent selection of items available to research, I definitely knew I needed to flesh out the tech-tree and put some more meat on the bones of inquiry.
To start that process I've added five new items to the Research Technology Tree, and they are all things you can build in the zoo, check out the update video: [previewyoutube="IgMhZHiXWyI;full"] New stuff to build is always fun! It's just the start though, lots more needed to fill out both the research options menu and the build options menu. Best get to work!
Oh, and I uploaded a video all about The Guild of Cursed Zookeepers: [previewyoutube="LMrhZw_lp3Y;full"] I talk through how the guild website works, how you can claim your exclsuive character, Kristof (and I also talk a little bit about the closed beta I've got going on right now sshhh, that's a secret.)
Till next time! Matt
The Eldritch Zookeeper! Run a cursed zoo full of monsters!
Who doesn't want to be a cursed zookeeper? Answer: 100% of all cursed zookeepers. But that's the beauty of a cursing someone; personal choice doesn't come into it!
In The Eldritch Zookeeper you run a zoo packed with unsettling, otherworldly monsters.
Deceived by a particularly well-dressed skeleton, a cursed zookeeper is forced to manage a zoo full of eldritch abominations, ideally with as little bloodshed as possible. Can our unfortunate zookeeper break his curse? Running a zoo filled with terrifying creatures that must be cared for isn't easy - construct enclosures and keep the monsters fed and reasonably content, and build amenities for the zoo visitors! A Happy Monster Zoo™ is when a creature's teeth/claws/exploding-tendencies are far, far away from the guest's vital organs. They need those! Monster rampages are discouraged.
Taking a mixture of inspiration from classic Bullfrog games (Theme Park World, Dungeon Keeper) and modern survival games, The Eldritch Zookeeper is coming to a variety of platforms very soon!
The Eldritch Zookeeper Festival Stream!
Matt, the developer of The Eldritch Zookeeper, will be streaming live gameplay, taking questions, maybe even accepting the occasional request to feed a zoo visitor to a monster. Come and join in, and say hello!
Our friendly Discord server will be open for any questions about The Eldritch Zookeeper. (The Discord always open, but still, it'll be especially open.) Or just come say hello!
