The games industry has no shortage of interesting games set to release in the near future. There are plenty of interesting releases scheduled to come out left, right, and center – and many of these titles originate from lesser-known studios that are doing a fantastic job of bringing to life weird and fresh ideas that we have never seen before. With this feature series, we try to take a look at such games and discuss them at length to give them the spotlight they deserve.
Today, we will be taking a look at Clapperheads’ upcoming Zoochosis which combines different gameplay genres and contrasting ideas to create something that looks amazing and has us salivating to know more. Clapperheads is a small game studio that previously worked on the free-to-play horror adventure Sparky Marky, and Zoochosis in many ways feels like a natural evolution of the ideas found in its previous games.
Zoochosis puts players in the shoes of a zookeeper whose job is to ensure that everything related to these animals remains up to order at all times. But things rarely ever proceed in that fashion, and soon the zoo becomes home to nightmarish creatures that must be stopped from wreaking havoc upon other animals in the premises. You see, there is a central cause behind the mysterious mutation of animals in the zoo – and you must work towards unraveling the conspiracy behind it all while trying to minimize the damage done through the infection.
The developers have stated that the story is going to be open-ended in nature, and the choices that you make throughout the narrative will serve as a deciding factor in the concluding chapters of the story. Depending on which animals you choose to save and which ones you let go of, players will be treated to different endings which also adds an element of replayability to the whole affair.
Coming to the gameplay side of things, Zoochosis’ gameplay starts out simple. You have to monitor the behavior of different animals which can range from taking regular thermal scans to analyzing their excreta for abnormalities or it could just be plain behavioral monitoring through surveillance cameras. It’s all routine work that wouldn’t be all that interesting in a general sense, but the fact that anything can go wrong at any time should help in keeping tensions high throughout the story.
Zoochosis’ developers have managed to really nail the horror aesthetic through creepy visuals and smart use of murky colours like red, green, and brown to really discomfort players from their core and make them uneasy. Take for instance how a dead body is brought into a grinder, and then the meat is chopped into fine chunks that are then fed to the animals in the zoo. There are several instances of such horrors spread throughout the zoo, and it would be interesting to see how it all plays out in the final release.
The star of the show is definitely going to be the mutated animals and their associated designs. Zoochosis’ trailers didn’t reveal much in that regard, but the sheer thought of a giraffe on spider legs turning into an animal mauling menace is as genius as it is scary, and the artists over at Clapperheads have done an amazing job of fully realizing those horrors with those designs. It’s obvious that the final release will be chock full of similarly mutated animals that will unnerve you from the very core, and we can’t really wait to see what’s in store.
Zoochosis will also task you to turn these animals back to normal, and that process would require some research and gathering of materials to craft the right antidote for the right creature. Acquiring these materials wouldn’t obviously be an easy job, so players will have to be strategic in how they move around the facility and how to avoid the dangers that lurk within its walls. The trailer showcases the protagonist crafting a tranquilizer gun for the aforementioned spider giraffe, and shooting a dose on its neck to get it back to normal. We don’t know whether we can expect thrilling boss fights against some of these creatures or not, but even the prospect of experiencing it all is something that has us salivating at the very thought of it all.
Coming to the visuals, the majority of Zoochosis’ visual appeal stems not from the raw visual fidelity on offer but from the art direction itself. Apart from the interesting creature mutations, the art team deserves due credit for capturing the essence of the different animals that inhabit the zoo. Throughout the trailer, we see cute little penguins strutting across artificial glaciers, gorillas going about their daily business, and kangaroos playing with each other. There’s impressive biological diversity to be found within Zoochosis, and that is one of the biggest reasons why we are so excited about the game. The developers have made good use of Unreal Engine 5, and the lighting and texture work are especially notable in the game’s visual presentation.
Zoochosis is a really interesting concept that takes inspiration from the likes of Five Nights at Freddy’s and expands those net of ideas into something much bigger and much grander in scope. The thought of setting this drama against a familiar backdrop like a zoo is a pretty genius move, and there’s definitely quite a lot of potential that can be capitalized on. The biggest challenge in Zoochosis would be to balance the different shades of gameplay in a manner that one doesn’t overpower the other. Of course, nailing that balance is going to be tricky – but Clapperheads looks to be on the right track to deliver an experience that might just turn out to be one of the biggest surprise hits of the year.
And that neatly brings us to the release side of things. Zoochosis is on track to release sometime in Q4 2024 – so thankfully we won’t have to wait too long to get our hands on this game. The developers announced the game earlier this year, so it also gets the advantage of having a shorter marketing cycle and keeping the hype and anticipation high throughout that period of time. However, it’s always possible that we may see some delays since we don’t have a concrete release date even now that we are in the second quarter of the year.
As of now, Zoochosis is only set to release on PC but it’s also possible that we might get console ports later down the line. But that majorly depends upon how the game ends up being received, so it’s best to keep expectations in check for now. Hopefully, the team is able to deliver a game that not only fulfills its potential but also surpasses the expectations of fans. Fingers crossed, until then.
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.