Download: Tiny Zoo Friends

Tiny Zoo Friends is a micro-management game for the iPad and iPhone that puts you in charge of your own zoo. You get to decide on the animals and where they are placed along with other attractions to attract visitors.

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There is a comprehensive shop to buy new animals and decorations for your zoo. As is common with all of these games, there are two currencies in use. Coins are easy to acquire as they are generated by the zoo animals. Zoo bucks are a lot more scarce unless you are willing to buy them with real money. As ever, self control is required as it can get very expensive if you want to buy everything offered that costs Zoo bucks.

If you play every day for five days there is a reward of three Zoo Bucks but there are animals that cost several hundred Zoo Bucks each.

You don't have to be content with making do with the initial selection of animals for your zoo as part of the game is cross-breeding animals to create new species. It adds to the sense of discovery but you might end up with some strained conversations explaining exactly what the bear and elephant are up to if you play with children.

Once you have selected the combination of animals to crossbreed, the new animal is raised in a nest in the lab. There is only one nest available when the game starts but more can be bought with zoo bucks. Once the animal is available there is only a certain amount of time in which they can be placed before they get sick. It's not fatal but curing the animal involves spending more zoo bucks. With the wide range of times needed to crossbreed animals it can be tricky catching them in time.

One of the reasons for crossbreeding animals is to complete collections of animals. Completing a collection brings different rewards including experience, coins and even more animals to add to the zoo.

The zoo is ranked overall on a variety of different scores including the number of animals and how many expansions you have bought. This give bragging rights but also gives an idea of what you should be concentrating on next.

If you can be self controlled enough not to spend out too much money, this is a fun game to play on the iPad or iPhone.