Many people have likely enjoyed some sort of park management game where a good percentage of the fun comes from finding new and inventive ways to torture your guests. The Eldritch Zookeeper is a upcoming game that lets you manage a park full of eldritch monstrosities that hopefully won’t kill your guests. Although, we all know you’ll let them out at least once.
The Steam page describes The Eldritch Zookeeper as a mix of classic Bullfrog games (like Dungeon Keeper and Theme Park World) and modern survival games. You control a zookeeper who runs around the zoo, places fencing, and tries to keep the horrors on display from killing the guests (and inevitably failing.) The synopsis for the game is as follows:
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? Every day a new terrifying creature that must be cared for arrives through the interdimensional portal – 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.
Of course, someone will cause some monster rampages. It’s inevitable. Have you seen some of the horrors made in games like Roller Coaster Tycoon? Even if you get someone who can resist the temptation, the Jurassic Park franchise keeps reminding us that zoos with giant, aggressive creatures can only end in tragedy.
The Eldritch Zookeeper does not have a solid release date yet. It will release on Steam, as well as “…a variety of platforms.”