The Art of... Let’s Build a Zoo
The founder and lead developer of Springloaded, James Barnard, says that Let’s Build A Zoo was as much inspired by Reservoir Dogs as it was Rollercoaster Tycoon.
James Barnard, lead developer of Springloaded
HOW DID THE IDEA FOR THE GAME AND ITS VISUAL DESIGN COME ABOUT? We have a wide range of people working at the company, from me (James) who loves the darkest things I can find, to Christine whose hobby is making cute crochet animals and monsters. We wanted to make something that had something for all of us, from cuteness to darkness. A zoo also offers a breadth of interesting topics, like, are zoos inherently bad? In some ways yes, but they also act as a living ark protecting species that would fare far worse if they were in the wild. The game’s visuals stem from our eternal love for pixel art, and the cute chunkiness that can be achieved when the medium is used in a certain way. Cindy (Lee), our lead artist, set out to make everything as colourful as possible, while both artists on the project have an undeniable eye for making even the most mundane objects look painfully cute.
THE GAME HAS BEEN DESCRIBED AS SERIOUS AND SILLY IN THE SAME BREATH. HOW MUCH DOES THE ART STYLE REFLECT THAT? We think the art is a huge part of the humour of the game. Imagine a gritty bacon factory, or abattoir with blood dripping from the walls, it’s suddenly very real and no longer a joke. The game has some very very dark themes, some of which are actually things I personally care about greatly. I think it’s very hard to start discussing what it means to kill for food, or why people are exploited for the profit of corporations in a way that still feels fun and entertaining. Framing a serious question in total ludicrousness is probably the
62 | MCV/DEVELOP February 2022
only way we can ask serious questions in games media without turning away most of our player base or making it a game with a “statement”. Our first intention with everything we do is to make people laugh or smile. But then simply because the game is a dark take on the real world we live in, we can’t help but bring up uncomfortable topics. It’s important to me that people see their zoo as a place they have agency, be ridiculously evil, or ridiculously good, in both directions the extremes are taken to a level of farcicleness, and the often ridiculous, but disarming art style helps us push at the edges of those limits.
WHAT WERE YOUR INFLUENCES? We were heavily influenced by Theme Park, going back and playing it now feels like a struggle. It’s clearly a game from another era, however I could still envision how the game made me feel when I was playing it over twenty years ago! I wanted to recreate the things that pulled me into that game for so long. From the delight of unlocking new things to build to the surprises of guests throwing up from too much excitement on an over eager teacup ride. The feeling of building your own giant park, and then just sitting back and watching the world you made tick along like some kind of complex machine was just entrancing. I felt like if I could recapture those things that made me enjoy the genre, we could make something special.
Another game that was an influence on us (as maybe seen in the research system) was Forager. Even though it might be hard to relate the two games, the sense of
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