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From the introduction:
Stupid, wild, hedonistic, and chaotic; goblins are everything man wishes to move beyond. While man can be said to constantly advance and move upwards and forwards, goblins are akin to pigs - content to wallow in mud and filth. Nature was not kind to goblins; they breed like rabbits, have lifespans slightly above a small dog, and explode when exposed to sunlight. Nevertheless, goblins can always be found on the fringes of society, surviving on the cast-off refuse of mankind.
An ancient pact keeps goblins from getting too much underfoot. One night a year humans lock their doors, board up their windows, and allow the goblins to run amok with no consequence. This wild night is the highlight of a goblin’s year, and each crew spends the months leading up to it picking the perfect location, planning glorious acts of recklessness, and scheming to seize the most choice of treasures from the world of man.
Night has fallen. The Van is in perfect running condition, or as good as a van built by goblins can be. The world stretches before you, young goblins. Run wild!
- Accessible to all ages
- Artwork designed to be internationally friendly without heavy text
- 60 puzzles with increasing complexity
- Playable solo or in a group
- Artwork production was time-consuming and labor-intensive
- Some of the more complex puzzles demand careful interpretation and can be challenging for casual players
- Logical deduction and pattern recognition through visual clues; mapping activities to animals and places
- Zoo at closing time; animals escape and cause chaos at night across multiple locations
- Designer diary style; explains development journey and production challenges using the puzzle narrative
- Quasal
- Dog Crimes
- Chroma Cube
- Murdering Green
- Green Rock Village Theater
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Deduction — Players infer which animal did what in which location and when using picture clues on tiles.
- Progressive difficulty with varied tile sets — 60 puzzles that graduate in complexity, introducing new tile types and constraints (time, weather, signposts).
- Signpost and layout interpretation — In advanced puzzles, players deduce the correct spatial arrangement without a fixed layout, using signposts and visual cues.
- Tile-based deduction — Players infer which animal did what in which location and when using picture clues on tiles.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- Zooligans came about very... it was a very straightforward process.
- Zooligans is available from the Happy Puzzle Company UK store.
- It's fun for all ages.
- You can play it on your own or you can play it as a little group of detectives working together.
- There are 60 different puzzles of increasing difficulty in this set.
- It starts off relatively simple and then it's got increasing difficulty levels as you play through.
- Finding lots of little pieces of artwork off the internet but then of course there wasn't always the right bit of artwork available for the picture that I wanted so I'd have to redraw things.
- I wanted to create one which was based around images that that means that the product is hopefully more attractive.