Zoodemonium Early Impressions: A Chaotic, Charming Monster Zoo That Feels Right at Home in the ’90s

I was given early playtest access to Zoodemonium, and I’ll be honest, I had no idea what to expect. I wasn’t sure it would be my kind of game. It didn’t take long to change my mind.

During my first session I streamed it (developer Dale Porter / HeyDale made the playtest NDA-free and explicitly open for content creators). One of my old coworkers was watching and dropped a comment I still completely agree with: “If this had come out in the ’90s, it would have been killing it.”

My own take is similar. It feels like Pokémon without the turn-based battles, mixed with the hands-on animal care of a game like Animal Shelter. It also would have been a perfect fit on the Game Boy Color or Nintendo DS. The loop is simple, satisfying, and surprisingly deep once everything starts going wrong.

What You’re Actually Doing

You inherit The Last Resort, the worst monster zoo in the world. Every day you hop in a truck and head into the wilds for short catching runs across six biomes. There are 36 monsters total, and every single one has exactly one simple, silly rule that can spiral into chaos if you’re not careful:

Miss a Blorp with your net and it splits in two.

Honkbills snatch whatever you’re holding and take off.

Chompboxes disguise themselves as trash cans.

Once you’ve caught something, you bring it back, build pens, keep the fences intact, feed them, and try to stop them from escaping,or worse, eating the visitors. Then you open the gates, restock the food and gift stands, clean up trash, and try to keep everyone happy while the chaos unfolds. You can hire NPC caretakers to help, or play with up to three friends (1–4 players total, online with a join code or fully solo with hired keepers).

The long-term goal is to impress Inspector Grisk during weekly reviews and raise the zoo’s rating from one star to five.

The Stuff That Makes It Stand Out

Beyond the day-to-day management, rare monsters are serial-numbered and seasonally capped. Season 1 has six Legendaries with only 100 numbered captures of each, and every rare comes with a verifiable certificate on the live registry website. There’s no trading or selling of these, just a permanent, provable record of what you caught.

The game is priced at $12.99 with no microtransactions or paid random items. Season 1 launches December 1, 2026 at 6:00 PM ET on Windows PC, Steam, itch.io, and the Epic Games Store. It supports English plus Simplified Chinese, Russian, Latin American Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, German, Japanese, and French. The tone and content are aimed at Everyone 10+ / PEGI 7—cartoon chomps, no blood.

Accessibility options include text scaling up to 150%, captions, color-blind modes, reduced motion, a Calm Mode, and fully remappable controls.

My Session

By the end of the night I was several hours deep and would have kept going if I didn’t have early plans the next morning. The tasks stack up in the best way: catch something new, realize its rule is going to cause problems, scramble to build and maintain pens, open the zoo, put out fires, and somehow still make money. It’s the kind of game that’s easy to lose track of time in.

Zoodemonium is a solid time-killer that actually rewards learning the systems instead of just grinding. It’s also a great option if you want something you can hand to kids. The management loop is clear once you get a couple of days under your belt.

If the full release keeps the same energy the playtest had, that friend’s “would have killed it in the ’90s” comment is going to age very well.

If you like my articles don't forget to drop a like and a follow, fell free to join my discord and my streams on TikTok.