Rodeo Stampede: Sky Zoo Safari (or Rodeo Stampede for short) is a 2016 mobile game created by Yodo1, the publishers behind Crossy Road. A mix between an endless runner and a zoo management sim, Rodeo Stampede puts the player character, a Cowboy, in the middle of an Animal Stampede with all kinds of creatures. To add animals to your zoo, you need to lasso and hang onto them until you've befriended them, and as your zoo expands, you can get more income for upgrading your Power Up Mount, and later on, unlocking new content such as new maps or "rare animals" (novelty reskins of animals you've befriended).
The obligatory wiki is here
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Rodeo Stampede: Sky Zoo Safari provides examples of:
Gameplay
- 1-Up: A variant in the form of the Revive Raven, an Epic Animal which gives you one continue per run. If you haven't purchased it, you'll have to watch a video or spend currency to continue, and without the Revive Raven there's no guarantee that the prompt will appear.
- Allegedly Free Game: Somewhat downplayed in that the Epic Animals are a one-time purchase, but if you don't spend real-life money for them, chances are you'll have a harder time in the long run of racking up money and expanding your zoo.
- And Your Reward Is Clothes: Leveling up enough with a given species of animal (by lassoing rare animals) nets you "Novice", "Wrangler", and "Champion" ranks for that particular species. Ranking up unlocks a random costume (called a Hat) for your player character, which you can choose to wear immediately or select later from the zoo's "Hats" screen.
- Anachronism Stew: The Jurassic world, the first Space Zoo world unlocked, has mostly Cretaceous dinosaurs with two non-dinosaur species mixed in.
- Animal Stampede: It's in the title, but subverted in the game itself - you aren't so much in danger from getting trampled, but rather failing to catch an animal before hitting the ground, plowing into an obstacle, or getting eaten by a predator.
- Auto-Scrolling Level: A variant in that the scene progresses diagonally, starting from the bottom left corner of the screen with the path towards the top right.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: Zig-Zagged with the Garden world, which features bugs. In world, it seems like the player has just shrunk to bug-riding size, but in the Space Zoo the bugs really are gigantic.
- Bribing Your Way to Victory: Epic Animals are purchase-only, but can provide certain advantages that can help you improve your zoo more quickly. The Cash Cow doubles your zoo income, the Mission Mule grants infinite missions that can net you free currency, the Revive Raven provides a single continue per run, and the Lucky Lamb causes rare animals to spawn twice as often.
- Character Level: Animal enclosures can be upgraded up to nine times to give new properties to each animal. These upgrades benefit you in many ways such as providing free money if you can hang onto an angry animal, smashing through more kinds of obstacles, or taking more time to get angry so your ride goes more smoothly.
- Endless Running Game
- Everything Trying to Kill You: Hitting an animal or obstacle without a mount that can smash things? You lose. Blundering into the mouth of a predator? You lose. Smacking into the wall? You lose.
- Foe-Tossing Charge: Riding an animal that can smash things through a herd of smaller animals results in this trope. You may even need to do this to complete certain missions that require you to smash a certain amount of animals either overall or in a single run.
- Freemium: Epic Animals are a Bribing Your Way to Victory variant. While the game itself is free of charge, they can only be purchased with Real Life cash.
- Gotta Catch Them All: There are 64 different animal species so far, each with at least 8 different skins (except the four one-off Epic Animals). This means at least 512 animals can be encountered in-game, though some can only be unlocked when their species' enclosure is upgraded enough or by completing certain tasks. A full list of animals can be found here.
- Holiday Mode: There have been setting updates for two Chinese New Years (2017 and 2018), along with the obligatory Halloween and Christmas events.
- Luck-Based Mission: The daily challenges can become this because the endangered animals are randomly selected and generated. Even with upgrades that allow for more rare animals to appear, you'd better pray to the Random Number God that you encounter one at any given time. It may take dozens of runs before you meet even one endangered animal and even then, you still have to succeed in taming it, which varies in difficulty depending on the species in question.
- Mouse World: The Garden world, complete with coins and discarded soda cans in place of rocks.
- No Plot? No Problem!
- One-Hit-Point Wonder: You only get one life per game. Two if you use the Revive Raven, watch a video, or spare some extra spending currency.
- Permanently Missable Content: Several skins were only available in the Holiday Mode events, but were unable to be unlocked once these events were over. Subverted in some cases where they were brought back as endangered animals.
- Power Up Mount: Certain animals like Rhinos, Elephants, and Brontosauruses can smash obstacles and other animals by running into them. Upgrading them allows you to smash more kinds of obstacles, reducing your chances of losing because something was in your path that shouldn't have.
- Secret Character: Secret animals are unlocked only by completing a certain mission. The first secret animal you can encounter, for example, can only be unlocked by hanging onto a Buffalo for 30 seconds without crashing.
- Turns Red: A variant in that certain animals, when ridden long enough, are described as "getting angry". Angry animals behave in a variety of different ways, such as speeding up, throwing you off, jumping uncontrollably, or eating you.
Animals
- Animals Not to Scale: As with Crossy Road before it, animals can be either bigger or smaller than they are in reality. Among other examples, you can ride rabbits, flying foxes, and toucans, all of which are smaller than a person in real life.
- Any of the flying animals should logically fall under this, not just toucans and flying foxes; evolving flight requires plenty of adaptations to an aerial life, one of them being a lightweight body that can’t handle much stress and, in vertebrates, leads to rather thin bones.
- The way in which the game categorizes “big” and “small” animals depends on whether or not seals or owls can smash them, as opposed to using their actual weight. As such, some pretty odd decisions are made; yaks are classed as big and buffalo as small, even though they weigh about the same in real life, and hippos are classified as small, despite being one of the largest land animals today. Even in terms of sprite size, the polar bears appear smaller than the brown bears, when it should be the other way around, and lions are particularly smaller than tigers, when the size difference isn’t quite as dramatic in real life (this becomes even odder when you consider that lions can eat any animal in the savannah, while tigers are unable to eat hippos, other tigers, or most big animals).
- Awesome, but Impractical: Tyrannosaurus rex will smash anything and can devour any animal, meaning that the only threats you'll have to worry about while riding them are walls, cliffs, and meteors in the Jurassic world. The catch? They get angry extremely quickly, slowing down once they do. If you don't jump off and lasso some other animal before then, you're lunch.
- Bat Out of Hell: Averted with the Flying Fox, which "Feeds on fruit, pollen, nectar and adoration." There's a rare Flying Fox called the Vampire Bat, though, and the description doesn't sugarcoat it: "It sucks."
- Bears Are Bad News: Ride on a Bear for too long, and it'll eat you in one gulp. This is largely averted up to that point, though, since Bears are useful in that they can eat other animals they run into (smaller animals normally, and any animal if upgraded enough), and can also smash trees that'd otherwise end your run if you plow into them.
- Brutish Bulls: Surprisingly averted with the Cape Buffalo, the first animal you ever lasso. This is despite the fact that cape buffalo are extremely aggressive in Real Life and are regarded by some as the most dangerous of the Big 5 game animals of Africa. Though when their enclosure is upgraded enough, Buffalo charge forward briefly as soon as you lasso them, smashing through anything in their path from trees to rocks to other animals.. It’s played straight with yaks and minotaurs, though.
- Bunnies for Cuteness: Rabbits show up in the Tundra world as Arctic hares, but there's also the unlockable Bunny Gator in the Jungle world, which "Uses its cute appearance to lure in its prey."
- Genial Giraffe: They're able to throw you great distances when angry or manually released - as the Giraffe description puts it, "With their long bendy neck, they are nature's own catapult." When upgraded enough times, they also increase lasso size when throwing you, making it easy to snag another animal before hitting the dirt.
- Kangaroos Represent Australia: They're among the first animals you can encounter in the Outback world. They're also very difficult to use without upgrading their enclosure, since their jumps are hard to control and can easily lead to you hitting something.
- Mechanical Lifeforms: Quite a few rare animals are robotic versions of the creature they're based on.
- Messy Pig: Surprisingly defied in the description for the Wild Boar: "Boars remove parasites by rolling in mud, so the mud actually makes them cleaner, not dirtier."
- Misplaced Wildlife: An interesting subversion in the case of Camels, an African and Asian species, which appear in the Outback, which is Australia in all but name. However, camels really CAN be found there, having been imported by the British for transport and construction during the 19th century.
- Played straight with Velociraptor, in that its description clearly states that the species is from Mongolia like in Real Life, while almost all of the other dinosaurs in the Jurassic world stampede are North American species. To be fair, its in-game size is closer to Deinonychus or Utahraptor, both from the U.S.
- And outside of the Space Zoo, there's the classic Polar Bears and Penguins in the Tundra, South American llamas, North American bald eagles, and Asian yaks in an otherwise European Mountain zone, and Asian tigers and African hippos in the same Jungle.
- Noble Wolf: Wolves aren't portrayed as dangerous in this game; lasso one and it'll get you great distances quickly as long as you can dodge obstacles and other animals. Though this becomes harder after it gets angry, since it'll run even faster still and leave you with less time to predict which way to turn.
- Panthera Awesome: Lions in the Savannah world, Tigers in the Jungle world. Both can eat certain types of other animals - and you when they get angry. In terms of riding ability, while tigers are more limited in their prey, they can eat flying animals out of the air and can be upgraded to not reduce your lasso when you land on them.
- Raptor Attack: The Raptors in the Jurassic world are the standard Jurassic Park fare (as tall as the player, fast-moving, and featherless with kangaroo-like arms), though a Feathered Raptor (albeit retaining incorrect pronated hands) is available as a rare animal. They're also like Ostriches, Wolves, Emus, and Foxes, in that they accelerate when angry, whereas real-life dromaeosaurs had legs likely more adapted for combat than speed.
- Rhino Rampage: If you lasso a Rhino, expect a lot of destroyed stuff and airborne animals very quickly. Upgrading the Rhino enclosure enough times not only allows Rhinos to smash through any obstacle (except walls of course) but also speed up upon doing so, making them one of the best ways of gaining ground without dying to something getting in the way.
- Sweet Sheep: The Outback world has Merino Sheep, which are stated to have been imported for quality wool (which is Truth in Television). They're among the most useful animals in this world, since their slow speed allows you to dodge obstacles more easily and their rapid bucking can earn you quick and easy currency if upgraded enough.
- Yowies and Bunyips and Drop Bears, Oh My: Drop Bears occasionally leap from trees and attack you when you play in the Outback. This is actually how you unlock the Drop Bear for play. The Bunyip, depicted as a bat-winged, demonic Drop Bear, is also a secret Drop Bear.
