Turns out running a profitable zoo is super easy unless you keep blowing those profits on dozens of chickens

AI is coming to take my job, so I'd better start looking for a new one. Luckily, there are a ton of job simulators on Steam, and I'm going to play as many as I can until I find my next career. This week's job: Zoo Life Simulator, an early access game about managing a zoo.

I'm not sure who put me in charge of a zoo so massive I need to ride a horse just to get across it and yet only gave me a budget of $1,200 to spend on animals to fill it—but that's the situation I find myself in on my first day of work in Zoo Life Simulator. I'm in a big, empty zoo with very little money (and a horse).

I browse the animal shop, which at this stage contains only chickens, rabbits, and geese, none of which I typically associate with zoos. But, you've gotta start somewhere, so I start with chickens. I spend half my cash on chickens, which at $60 each means I now have 10 whole chickens. Welcome to my awesome zoo?

But hold on. It's my first day on the job and I want to show some initiative, some strong decision-making skills. Go big or go home, right? So I take my remaining $600 and also spend it on 10 chickens. I've blown my entire budget within a few seconds of being hired, sure, but that's what it takes to get ahead. 20 chickens. From this I shall build my zoo empire.

Unfortunately, the game won't let me do anything else until I've bought food for my 20 chickens, and I can't do that with $0. Humbled, I sheepishly sell back half of my chickens. Worse, I don't even get my 600 dollars back. I sell my other 10 chickens, but still, no refund.

It's day one of my new job and all I've done is spend $1,200 on zero chickens. I try to imagine what I'd actually do if I lost my employer's entire budget on my first day of work, and I honestly think I'd go to my bank, take out the amount of money I'd spent, and quietly slip it into the zoo's cash drawer. I'd prefer losing my own money over getting yelled at or exposed for incompetence.

I do the equivalent of that by starting the game over.

This time I buy a rabbit. Just one rabbit. My bravado is gone and my goal is now to just get through a single day without screwing things up. I release the bunny from its cargo container, which explodes (don't worry, in this zoo universe that's normal). The rabbit sort of creeps around so slowly I suspect it's either elderly or horribly ill, but it's so small and so far from the enclosure fence that maybe no one will notice.

I buy a bag of rabbit food, which is airdropped by helicopter in a container roughly 50 times its size (this is also normal). I pick up the bag with telekinesis (normal) and due to the awkward physics of the game, only manage to pour about 1/100th of the food into the rabbit's trough, losing the rest. A fine start!

I ride my horse back to the park entrance—it suddenly occurs to me a horse would make a much better zoo exhibit than a rabbit—and have my zoo's grand opening. Grandly, nothing happens for a while. I get on my horse and ride out of the park, eventually spotting some people slowly walking in my direction. No cars, no buses. The people in this world simply walk from the distant horizon to my park entrance, then trudge another half mile to the rabbit enclosure.

I leap off my horse, closely monitoring the reaction of my guests who spent $15 at the gate to see a single, elderly rabbit behind a fence. I am not disappointed, and neither are my guests.

COOL, one says. WOW says another. OMG says a third. The words appear over their heads as if they're sound effects torn from a superhero comic. They wave their arms and pump their fists. Some even dance. Looks like my Oops No Animals Except One Rabbit zoo is a hit.

With just a bunny to manage, there's not much else to do on day one. The rabbit takes a dump and I clean it up. It eats a surprising amount of food for a lone rabbit, but there's no risk of it running out. A visitor gets inside the rabbit pen somehow, stands ankle deep in the pond inside the enclosure and faces the corner, yet still seems utterly jazzed about visiting my nearly immobile rabbit. Maybe running a zoo is actually really easy? How did Matt Damon make a whole movie about this?

Profit made, the next morning I purchase a single goose and move it in next door to the rabbit. Feeling a bit more daring, I also buy a "service area," which turns out to be a hot dog cart, another hot dog cart, a kebab cart, and a third hot dog cart. The day ends with more profits from hot dog lovers and people impressed by an old rabbit and a silent goose.

Day three is a bit shakier. Both the rabbit and goose seem to be consuming entire bags of food that are several times their size and pooping like crazy. The paths of my zoo are now filled with trash, presumably from guests visiting the many hot dog stands and not disposing of their litter properly. Once trash cans are full they burp up a giant trashbag, which I must telekinetically hover to a dumpster down the road.

And no matter how many times I increase the cost of the park entrance fee (with two very different animals on display, I've jacked up the price from $15 to $50), everyone entering only pays $13 each. Vexing.

Even so, by the next day I've doubled my net worth and then some: I've got five grand burning a hole in my pocket and I'm desperate to level up to a larger animal that'll really impress the most easily impressed people in existence, like a goat. But at this rate, it's going to take ages with just one rabbit and goose, so it's time for the nuclear option.

I circle back to my original plan: go big or go home. I spend $3,000 and buy 50 chickens. Let's get bawk wild.

First problem: the nearest available pen isn't anywhere near the rabbit or goose or the spot where the helicopter drops my animal food. It's way down a road and way up a hill, so to even get there I need to load up the horse with feed bags and gallop. Second: if one rabbit and one goose each eat a single giant bag of food in a day, how much do 50 chickens eat? This is a question I should have asked a few seconds before buying 50 chickens instead of a few seconds after.

Third: the chickens are simply too annoying to be around. They don't crow, but they do bawk-bawk-bawk constantly. I have to mute the volume to even set foot in the chicken pen, and I have to set foot in the chicken pen constantly because they eat so much. With the food trough at 0%, I dump an entire sack full of feed in. In under a minute, it's empty again. I'm going to be doing nothing but humping food up the hill all day and night.

It's hard to argue with success, though. I've doubled the amount of guests visiting my trash-filled zoo and in a single day I've already made back the $3,000 I spent on those annoying chickens. Gritting my teeth, I buy another 50 chickens, hoping to speedrun my way to goat ownership.

But something occurs to me when I check on my goose, which has taken three stinky dumps already today. If one goose poops three times a day, that means 100 chickens…

Hey, boss? I said I wanted to go big or go home. But I definitely don't want to pick up 300 chicken poops today. So I'm going home.

Performance Evaluation