Portugues
Gnu in the Zoo
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About the game
You are a gnu, and tonight your stall is draughty, your keeper did not tuck you in, and the gate of the gnu enclosure has been left open. Somewhere past the lions, the elephants and the aviary lies the way out of the zoo.
The trouble is that you cannot do it on your own. You can carry one thing at a time, you have hooves instead of hands, and the only animals who understand you are other gnus, who are half asleep and need things kept very simple. So the night becomes a matter of gathering a herd, finding keys, and getting everyone to do their part.
Alex Ball wrote it as a light puzzle game full of gnu puns, loosely inspired by software freedom and licensing (and by Flanders and Swann's song about the gnu). This is Release 3, from 2016, which fixed many bugs of the first versions.
Playing it here
Click Play now and the story starts in the player. Everything is typed: write
a command after the > prompt and press Enter. The game is in English. Type
help for the commands and a few pointers, and about for the background.
Commands
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
n, s, e, w, in, out |
walk around the zoo |
look (l), examine (x), touch something |
look around, look closer, or nudge something |
take, drop, throw ... at |
you can hold just one thing at a time |
unlock ... with |
open the locks you find keys for |
name, command |
give an order, as in affero, follow me |
inventory (i), score |
what you hold, and how far you have got |
help / about |
commands and hints, and the story behind the game |
undo |
take back your last move |
save / restore |
keep your progress in this browser and load it back |
A few things worth knowing
Start next door. The gnu in the next stall is the first one worth talking to, and the game's own help says so.
Keep orders short. The other gnus are sleepy. Simple instructions work; long ones do not.
Look closely. Examining things helps more than usual, and touching or stroking an animal can have surprising results.
Leave the aviary for last. The author says it is the hardest part of the zoo. Escaping is the main goal; freeing the others is a bonus.
Credits and licence
Gnu in the Zoo was written by Alex Ball and is released under the MIT licence, which allows it to be shared freely. The cover art is not included here. The licence text is linked from this page.