"Zoo tiles that combo into the millions, once the soft locks stop"
About
Zoominoes is a roguelike deckbuilder about running a zoo by placing animal tiles onto a grid, in the mould of Balatro and Slay the Spire. You match tiles by colour and type, feed animals snacks to boost their values, and collect souvenirs, trinkets and relics that bend the scoring rules. A run spans 28 days, each ending in a score threshold you have to clear, and 20 different zookeepers each start you with a distinct twist on the board. Endless mode, daily-run leaderboards, draft and challenge modes sit alongside the base campaign. The pull is the number-go-up chase: stacking synergies until a single tile placement pays out in the millions.
Verdict
Zoominoes takes the number-go-up deckbuilder and grounds it in something tactile: you place tiles, match them, and watch a modest board turn into a scoring machine you built yourself. The twenty zookeepers keep the opening fresh and the combo discovery is where it earns its long sessions, even if a few characters clearly scale worse than the rest. What keeps it from the top shelf is the plumbing. Soft locks after a reward, cards jamming under the interface, and a UI that gives up once your score hits the millions are all real, and the hardest tier leans harder on luck than it should. The developers are patching fast, and if the stability holds this is an easy recommendation.
You'll like it if …
- +you chase the moment a single placement pays out in seven figures
- +you enjoy learning twenty different starting twists and hunting the combo each one wants
- +readable, cute presentation matters to you as much as the maths underneath
You'll dislike it if …
- −a run you lose to draw and placement luck rather than a misplay will sour you
- −you want a campaign with a story rather than a pure score chase
- −run-ending soft locks are a dealbreaker until the patches settle
Breakdown
- +Tile placement is quick to grasp and the matching of colour and type gives every placement a clear consequence
- +Feeding snacks and rearranging the board turns each turn into a small optimisation puzzle rather than a card draw you accept
- +The scoring ramp rewards planning several placements ahead, and the combo payoff genuinely escalates
- −The hardest difficulty can hand you a loss on day one purely through card and placement RNG, with no play around it
- −Some players hit difficulty spikes that feel like variance rather than a test of skill
- +Twenty zookeepers each reshape the opening, from raven-and-black-tile builds to rainbow-tile scaling
- +Discovering how synergies compound as the board fills is where the game opens up
- +Endless, draft and challenge modes extend a run well past the 28-day campaign
- −Not every zookeeper scales equally; a few feel undertuned and lack a viable path to the big numbers
- −The strongest combos can trivialise later days once you know them
- +The zoo theme threads through the mechanics, like the goth zookeeper who starts with ravens and gets a coffin animation on death
- +Thematic touches make the systems easier to read rather than just decorating them
- −There is no story to speak of; the theme carries mood, not plot
- +The cartoon art gives animals and zookeepers real personality, and the clean colour coding doubles as a readable visual language
- +Sound design and animation land the feedback on a successful combo
- +Soundtrack draws specific praise for holding up across long sessions
- −The UI falls apart once bonus panels climb into the millions, with numbers scattering across the screen
- −Some localisation slips, including Korean text surfacing in the Japanese build
- +The developers patch actively and respond to reported issues
- −Soft locks after picking a reward can strand you on a board you already cleared
- −Cards can slip under the snack bar and become unusable
- −Game state doesn't always restore correctly after a restart
score
