Last updated on January 23rd, 2026 at 06:30 am
ZOOKEEPER BATTLE – Puzzle Game Review
ZOOKEEPER BATTLE is a Puzzle/Casual game from KITERETSU.INC, first launched in 23rd August 2012.
It’s rated 4+ and currently has 538+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes ZOOKEEPER BATTLE Stand Out
We've reached over 10 million downloads! Thank you ZOOKEEPER fans! 12/14/2020
Featured in App Store for the US, Canada, Brazil, China, Japan, Korea, and many more!
Ranked overall #1 in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and other countries!
“ZOOKEEPER”, the popular action puzzle game played by over 10 million people, is now a Battle Puzzle, and is available for iOS!!!
“ZOOKEEPER” has powered up and become even more fun, with rankings, avatars, item collection, and other new elements!
This game is simple! For those who is familiar with "ZOOKEEPER", and even those who don’t can enjoy the game together!
“How to play”
How do you catch animals?
Slide an animal side by side, and line up three or more animals of the same kind vertically or horizontally to catch them!
The animals caught will count towards ATTACK or DEFENSE points.
How do you battle?
Battle by catching animals for ATTACK and DEFENSE points, 30seconds per round.
When your opponent’s LIFE is completely depleted, you win!
In the event of a draw, battle it out on the next round!!
*When victory hasn’t been decided after 5 rounds, most remaining LIFE wins.
Invite friends
Inviting friends to join the game, not only you'll get x1 power bottle for every friend invited (max 10 friends),
but you will also get the item "Hot Air Balloon" after inviting 10 friends.
"Tips"
Animal panel's arrangement is the same as your opponent!
even falling animal panels are also the same as your opponent.
The one who catch animals more effectively wins.
However, item panels will fall randomly,
therefore, victory just may depend on your luck.
Master active chains!
Just sits back and waiting for animal panels to disappear won’t get you anywhere!
While the panels disappear, try keep catching other animals and make your own chains!
Don’t miss the lucky animal!
One of the animal type are to be selected as Lucky animal, catching it will counts towards both your ATTACK and DEFENSE.
Don’t forget to check them out when starting a new round!
Losing Connection During Battle
When your opponent lost their connection during battle, their ATTACK and DEFENSE scores will be calculated from ATTACK and DEFENSE of their previous game.
At the time of installing this app(including updates), it is assumed that you have understood and agreed to all of our terms of service.
If you do not agree to the terms of this agreement, please refrain from using this service.
https://kiteretsu.jp/terms/
This Puzzle game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, ZOOKEEPER BATTLE is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 13th January 2026
Recent improvements include:
Thank you for your continued patronage of "ZOOKEEPER Battle!".
The following features have been added in this update.
▼Bugs Fix
- Minor bug fixes
Download & Availability
ZOOKEEPER BATTLE is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get ZOOKEEPER BATTLE on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
Love this game but sometimes the server connection can become annoying. We have had several occasions where we were trying to visit friends and server connection error occurred. When we retry, all friends were mark visited but we didnt get any visitors.
Please add rewards for a high rank, rebalance vandals, and fix login thing, it only tracks last visit not last login. Add us as a friend if you are very high level, like 200 or higher, our id is MI1t3KAg. Capitals matter somehow our name (for now) is JaxonS. Also, please increase max name length to 15 characters or so, so that more people can have unique names. Great game though.
Listen, we looove this game, but can we add a new quest? Boss monkey family seems so outdated compared to the new zoo animals (prize wise) lets add more to the lore, Im still playing the game no matter what <3.
We've been playing this game since 2014 and we love it so much. No required purchases or ads in game. Our only complaint was that the items in the gachas seemed to always be the same. After we left our review, we started seeing new items! We don't think we'll ever stop playing.
Ive been playing zookeeper since the game came out 12 years ago and its been a great game since. Sure they have gacha that gets kind of annoying from pop-ups but you never see ads for anything else unless youre going out of you way to click them (we.e. Visitor rewards). The gacha is completely optional since youll get plenty of opportunities to win great prizes without spending money. We have like over 1k gacha medals and we dont even want to use them because our inv will start getting cluttered lol, platinum medals im pretty sure are best when you save 25 for a stamp event that has a reward you really like.
Ever since we were a wee lad we played this game, until one day, we deleted it. But, a few days ago we saw something that reminded us of it and we needed to come back. And all we have to say, is that youre just as beautiful as the day we lost you.
Its very fun we get to interact with. People and get money from it tho it is hard. During battles or using battles with npc:((.
There are bugs when we dont receive the rank prize and event points are reduced to 0. Now as of 10/01/2024 unable to connect to server.
Very long time player, love this game. Always felt it was difficult to upgrade your character or zoo look but this is always a game we always end up redownloading:).
Really slow user interface with annoying pop-up windows and app updates every time you open it. We don't play it anymore because its a lengthy chore every time you open it.
Zookeeper has been ruined with ads you cant really skip for township. Its prominent and you can accidentally hit it and be extracted from your zookeeper game. Otherwise zookeeper is a lot of fun. Fix this please.
Zookeeper at its most basic is an enjoyable game. Match 3, score attack and defense points, fight your opponent. The regular mix of events and special limited time recurring game modes is nice as well and helps keep the game from getting stale for the most part. Our biggest issue with this game is its monetization aspect and board algorithms. Sometimes youll get a board with millions of matches that let you chain and obliterate your opponent, whereas sometimes (often times) youll go on a streak of matches with boards with no matches, and get destroyed several times over. The monetization is annoying in the aspect that its always shoving in-app purchases in your face (none of which are mandatory). We dont think cosmetics apply any sort of advantage, but with this game we never really know. If you plan on picking this up, take all this into consideration.
We have had zookeeper battle for eleven years (since it came out, although we had to delete and redownload at one point, so we lost our earliest event items) and its one of our favorite apps to date. We adore the main battle mechanics and most of the other mini games involved. However, theres a few things that really bother us and hinder our enjoyment of the game as of late. The first is a number of mini games we used to like are seemingly no longer available? We remember years ago the mecha bosses that appear twice daily used to rotate between a bunch of fun challenges including things like getting 4-in-row or doing a specific chain capture within a time limit. As of September (when we picked up the game again for the anniversary celebration) Ive noticed the mecha bosses have only been rotating through three games: the shining stars search, rabbit adventure quest, and the disturbing mecha boss quest. While these are fun, we miss a lot of the old challenges, as well as the variety; these three quests can get pretty stale after the first two rotations. Particularly when the mecha boss quest is already similar to the roulette wheel challenge that appears pretty regularly. The second issue is in regards to the zp event. There was a recent change to the way ultra rare bosses spawn, now appearing after defeating a vandal instead of when clicking on visitors (as with the common and rare bosses). We strongly dislike this change, as it has made them incredibly difficult to defeat. We have put a lot of time into the current Dragon Crocodile event and as a result our rare bosses are already quite difficult to defeat on our own without using special items (like power bottles or support smashes). This also means that ultra rares wont appear until AFTER Ive drained our entire cp bar on a rare, making them even harder to hit and ask for help. In the past, we were able to wait until our cp refilled before clicking on visitors and triggering a boss; now that is no longer an option, which makes the zp event way harder (and less enjoyable, as after a while it feels impossible). Our final problemand the reason Im writing this review and lowering our rating from five starsis that we accidentally clicked no way on an ultra rare boss that spawned. After defeating a vandal, we backed out of the zp event screen, intending to also back out of our zoo to the main screen, when an ultra rare boss appeared at a delay. The back button in the our zoo screen is exactly where the no way option is on the ultra rare vandal appeared pop up. Needless to say we were devastated, as ultra rares are worth a ton of points and there was no way to undo our misclick. Please please please add some sort of confirmation for dismissing an ultra rare (or the ability to click back into it, like the way choosing battle later works for the vp events). We hate that we can lose up to 160 zoo points just from trying to back out of our zoo and not expecting the pop up (normally it appears in the zp event screen after defeating a boss. It did not appear directly after we defeated the previous boss, instead appearing at a delay). We have full confidence in the zookeeper team to make adjustments that will improve the user experience and keep it just as fun as its been for the last decade. We love the design, the lack of ads is amazing, all of the events are clearly made by people passionate about their gameit only hurts that our enjoyment has been soured by these latest frustrations.
ALWAYS defaults to lowest prize on spin the wheel. Never have received more than minimum you cheats. Definitely uses programming to get hopes up and then dash them so you spend. Unclear instructions. If you can put up with that, the game itself is fun.
We try to connect to the game every hour for 2 days, but we couldnt. We have played this game every day,now we cant play it we are very disappointed. Please help us to check what is going on? Also we have android account, we cant play either.
Ive been playing this game since middle school. Sometimes we stop playing it, but when we do pick it back up and play it, its lots of fun. Graphics are a cool-kind of retro and the puzzles and bosses are interesting.
We love this game! Ive been playing for years! Our only complain is that they recently changed the design of the animals and they have a weird bold outline. It makes our eyes hurt and the movement feels slower for some reason. Other than that its such a fun and addicting game.
It keeps kicking us out!!! Please fix it its the only game we play.
This is a great game, we used to play all the time on our DS. The game works perfectly as an app.
Super fun game and awesome graphics. We wish there were more challenges, quests, and special events, though. Just playing against random players over and over isnt as fun as completing events and getting prizes. But honestly still 5 stars because the game is so fun and there are a lot of different ways to play.
Loved playing this game as a kid, it was a fun and great game! Love it.
Have played this game for years. We really enjoy the different activities they provide, but we get a little frustrated that the game doesnt seem to be truly random and fair. A lot of times there seems to be an algorithm that asks the player to use a bottle to gain any success. Some of the games are just frustrating. For example, the game where the mecha boss just moves things around after you do a strategic setup. Our favorite game is Group Battle, though it appears less frequently than many of the others. We continue to be a loyal player in spite of these shortcomings.
We dont like being on our phone, and we find ourselves playing this regularly.
We have played this game for years but all the sudden they just suspended our account. We submitted a request to investigate why our account is suspended but they just kept replying canned messages. Maybe that is because we dont purchase anything from them but still be able to win their challenges.
Why does this game make us update every day when we sign in.
Ive played this game for years, its super addicting and we love the battle mechanics and ranking system. Also the fact that theres so many different events. We hate the way they handle micro transactions though. The price of gatcha medals is absolutely insane (3$ per medal), and they only give you a teeny tiny chance of getting whatever rare item you want. Thats 3$ for around 1% chance of getting a rare item. Of course you can always buy in bulk and save a few bucks (10 medals for 25$) but thats still kinda. Stupid.
You ignored our requests and you ruined the game, sorry. We will come back when you at apply one of our requests.
If the game want you to lose they will just give you a game with no or 1 combination, and no matter how fast you combine hit they dont let you combo. If they want you win even you swipe slow you get a few combo and get good defense score. Whats the point if the game control your play result. Im not playing again.
We enjoy the game a lot. However, the connection is not stable. Sometimes it took us at least 5 times to connect to the server. Plus, whenever theres an event, a lot cheaters appear and once event ends, the game back to normal.
Pay to play… If you dont spend money you are severely disadvantaged. Constantly getting boards with one move at a time, or no more moves. But spend money on items in the store and magically your find yourself with huge combos and on a massive winning streak. This is a cross platform game where the android version is easily hacked and most of them cheat. You have no way to filter these players out so majority of the time you get taken out from first round battles. It could be a great game… But extremely aggravating. We are done with this game its deleted and never going to be installed again.
We love this game without this game, there wouldnt be angry birds fight, we love fight very much it was our favorite angry birds game, we loved getting powerful gear to fighting in the pig lab. Even though its a match 3 game it had good rpg style mechanics and originality. Please partner with rovio again and bring this legendary game that millions loved.
They use psychological tricks to keep you addicted and spending and at the end of the day you end up spending more than what you bargained for. Horrible. This game should be illegal for the disgusting practices they use.
Im not a fan of pay to play; but dont mind it when its priced fairly and doesnt seem designed to milk every player for all theyve got. This app seems predatory and greedy as its designed to appeal to children but is way out of their price range to pay for the exciting features not to mention frustrating for adult players as well. Our suggestion would be to offer a monthly or weekly subscription price for regular players to enjoy battles with unlimited CP. We would be happy to change our rating if this were offered. Also there are not enough female characters available. When female characters are offered it is usually as a platinum or special gacha. You could spend $200 to get 88 platinum gacha plays two special gacha plays, and still not get one female character, just the same old 6 star decorations over and over again!!! Gacha gifts are way too repetitive. Why are the developers being stingy on a digital characters? This seems like such as easy way to keep loyal players happy.
After the recent app update we seem to be having a problem where our beginning and ending greetings keep resetting back to the default ones. We would keep setting the ones we want and then after a while they would reset back to the default greetings. Please fix this.
There is a glitch, we defeated mech boss and it said that we get a purple coin. And we never got it in our inbox. Thats why we give this a one star.
Would give it 5 stars if we knew how to okay with friends.
The app wont open on our phone after the most recent update :( ive reset our phone and redownloaded the app. Still wont work.
New iphone 11 and now get Cannot connect to server message 4 times before getting to our zoo then works fine. When we need to back out of our zoo it starts all over again…4 times of trying to connect to server. This is a HUGE waste of our time and makes us not want to play. :(.
Always a fun game to kill time with love the dream tower missions right now.
Ive been trying to download this game for three days, its taking us back to the times where id have to get off our phone to use our internet. We played the DS game forever ago and even had this app a few years back and loved it. We just wish we could play now but it cant load any event files & we have to keep it open for it to download.
CAN YOU GUYS PLEASE MAKE ANIMATED BACKGROUNDS AND DECORATIONS it will make the game even better.
Love this game, but hate the pointless updates and event data will drive you crazy.
We love this game. We have played it since it wasnt an application yet. It was just a game on some website and no gacha price.
Fun game but its almost impossible to transfer data.
On our iPhone X, with gigabit internet, the event data downloads a tenth of a percent at a time, meaning we cant play the game.
Ive had this game for a long time, and despite waiting for the event data to download, we love this game! Its not pay to win at all, and so far we have not experienced any softlocks. We truly enjoy Zookeeper, and we cant wait to see whats next for this long term game! If you need a good timekiller, we recommend this game. From defeating zoo vandals to collecting crazy species of animals, this game has so much surprises in store.
Ive always liked this game, its so underrated.
Used to be 92 medal. Each medal costs 3 bucks. Paid $400 in total. This game has become too expensive to play.
Event download times are the worst Ive seen on a game. Cant play they game because of them.
Hear us out: we have a collection of sets of character evolve items two or three out of the necessary to evolve fusion them. Im sure im not the only one.. Wouldnt it be cool it within our zoos, there were a shop & we could post items for sale?? Backgrounds, accessories, evolve items, etc. Because we all know the characters are rarely if at all cycled through again. Juuuuust a thought.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 6.7.5
- Size: 157.00 MB
- iOS: 11.0 or later
- Languages: EN, JA, KO, ZH, ZH
- Content Advisory: Loot Boxes
- Developer: KITERETSU.INC
Last updated: 13th January 2026 | Genre: Puzzle, Casual | Developer: KITERETSU.INC