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Alien Zoo
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About the game
You are the pilot of a small flying saucer, and your boss is an alien zookeeper with a very specific wish: a zoo full of Earthlings. Your job is to fly over a sleepy night-time town and collect whatever walks, waddles or clucks on the ground: townspeople, cats, chickens, cows and a few rarer creatures.
The saucer is not a graceful machine. Gravity keeps pulling it down, so you spend the whole game fighting to stay in the air while you line up the tractor beam on a target. Every Earthling you lift takes up room in the ship, and every one that spots you raises your attention meter. Let it fill up and the town fights back, and the saucer starts taking fire. Staying out of sight is half of the game.
When the hold is full, fly straight up, out of the top of the screen, to report to the zookeeper and hand over your catch. You are paid in alien bucks, and the money buys upgrades for the ship: a wider tractor beam, more room for passengers, better stealth and more speed. Each run is a small loop of risk and reward, and the upgrades let you push a little further each time.
The pixel art is warm and moody, the soundtrack is catchy, and the sound effects (squeals, moos and splats included) were recorded and synthesized by the team, which gives the game a lot of personality for a jam entry.
Playing it here
Click Play and wait while the game loads (about 21 MB, downloaded only when you press the button). Click inside the game once so that it gets the keyboard, then press Go on the title screen. The zookeeper explains the basics in the first screen; read the little dialogue, then choose your upgrades and head to Earth.
Controls
| Input | Action |
|---|---|
| W, A, S, D or the arrow keys | fly the saucer |
| Space, Enter or a mouse click | tractor beam |
| Fly off the top of the screen | check in with the zookeeper and sell your catch |
Tips
Watch the meter. The bar under your health bar shows how suspicious the town is, and it changes colour from green to red as it fills. Pull back before it gets there.
Do not get greedy. The counter in the top right turns red when the hold is full, and a full ship cannot take more. Cash in instead of circling for one last cow.
Buy stealth early. Upgrades are cheap, and a quieter saucer makes the first trips much easier.
FAQ
Is it free to play? Yes. The game is free software under the MIT licence.
Does it work on a phone? No. It needs a keyboard (or a mouse for the beam), so a computer is the way to go.
Why is it called Alien Zoo here? The jam entry is titled "If I Ran the (Alien) Zoo". The title screen of this version says Alien Zoo, and that is the only change to the game.
Credits and licence
Alien Zoo was made for Ludum Dare 58 by Levi Lindsey (code and graphics), Jake Shoudy (code) and Alden Witt (music and sound), and runs on Godot Engine 4.5.1 under its MIT licence. The code and all of the assets are under the MIT licence; according to the team, every sound effect was either synthesized from scratch or recorded and every graphic is original. The fonts are Nunito (SIL Open Font License), Roboto (Apache License 2.0) and pxlzr by levilindsey (SIL Open Font License).
The licence texts, including the notices of the libraries inside the Godot engine, and the exact build recipe of this version are linked from this page.