Disco Zoo is an Idle Game developed by Milkbag Games and published by NimbleBit (also known for Tiny Tower) in which you rescue various animals, put them in your zoo, and throw disco parties.
This game contains examples of:
- Ad Reward: When you run out of tries on a rescue mission, you can watch an ad for five more instead of paying a Discobux.
- Bribing Your Way to Victory: It's possible to buy coins, Discobux, and Space Coins for real money, though the game is reasonably balanced so that you never need to. There's also a one-time purchase to gain access to the Zoopedia, a reference guide for the patterns to find animals on rescue missions.
- Cap:
- Each animal pen can hold up to 25 animals. After that, further rescued animals of that type must be either released into the wild or sent into space.
- Freedom statues cap at diamond (40 animals released). You can still release animals after that, but you can't get anything for it but a handful of coins.
- While the cost of rescue missions to a given area increases with each trip, it maxes out at a set number somewhere around 20 times the base cost.
- Company Cross References: Construction workers building an animal habitat will sometimes ask "Are we building a tower?"
- Easter Egg: The parking lot by the office has a bus in it. Tapping the bus three times brings you to "Funky Bus", a traffic-themed clone of Flappy Bird where you can earn a few extra coins.
- Global Currency Exception: Moon and Mars rescue missions require Space Coins instead of regular coins, earned by sending rescued animals to space zoos.
- Minimalist Cast: The game contains exactly one actual character — Sue, your assistant.
- New Game Plus: While the game has no formal end condition, collecting 10 animals in every pen of 10 regions enables the Time Machine, which resets the zoo's progress in exchange for unlocking a new Timeless animal. Timeless animals earn more coins and stay awake longer than even Mythical animals, and there's one in each region, so it'll take 12 resets to unlock them all.
- Notice This: When searching your zoo for a lost animal or hat, a ticking noise will play if you're within a screen of it, and the lost thing will emit a big "!" particle to draw visual attention.
- Power Equals Rarity: Economic power, in this case — Rare animals earn more coins and stay awake longer than Common ones, Mythical ones even more so, and Timeless ones most of all.
- Premium Currency: Regular coins, constantly flowing in from your zoo exhibits, are used for basic gameplay — going on rescue missions and buying new vehicles (once you've got enough animals in your zoo). Discobux, rarely acquired from missions, visitors, and events, can be used to hurry construction, make extra search attempts on rescue missions, and buy vehicles without meeting the zoo size requirement. All currencies can be bought in the shop, but it's pretty clear the game wants you to buy Discobux.
- Pun: Among the animals on the moon are "lunar ticks", "moonkeys", and "moonicorns". Mars animals, meanwhile, include a "marsmot", "marsmoset", and "marsmallow".
- Shout-Out:
- One of the random events has you seek out a goose escaped from Untitled Zoo.
- The fox pen is one big "The Fox (What Does the Fox Say?)" joke: visitors will occasionally ask what their sound is, other visitors might suggest "wa-pa-pa-pa-pow", while the foxes themselves say "ring-ding-ding", "ahee ahee", and strings of Morse code.
- The time machine that lets you go to the Jurassic appears to be a Delorean.
- The editor of the newspaper that reviews your Jurassic exhibits is named Ian Malcolm.
- The Mythical animal in the City region is a "sewer turtle" dressed in ninja gear.
- Workers at the helipad will sometimes randomly say "My spoon is too big!"
- One of the animals you can rescue on the Moon is a Tribble.
