In no uncertain terms, indie games are largely the backbone of the gaming industry — they aren’t afraid to fail because they aren’t typically burdened by the same trials and tribulations of a AAA developer. This leads to two different types of indie devs, one that will follow trends to stay relevant while tossing in some sort of their own flavor to make their games stand out just enough to lead to streamers or an audience to find it, basically the game developer equivalent of throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks, and then those that just wanna make silly little games.
TRUSO is the latter; an indie developer who has two games under the banner; Just Waiting Cats, a simple waiting game that is unabashedly a game that could be considered “not a game,” and this one — MyVoiceZoo.
MyVoiceZoo is a cheap little game where you must build up a zoo where every time the animal makes a noise, you get money. The thing is, it’s not a normal zoo, far from it, the main gimmick of TRUSO’s second title here is that you can control what each animal sounds like. It’s peak streamer bait, sure, but even if you aren’t a streamer, it’s still a very fun time just screaming into a headset mic and listening to it come out of a duck or frog or something.
MyVoiceZoo, aesthetically, gives vibes of something like Scribblenauts, it’s simple, pleasing to look at, and yes, the facial animations of all the animals are funny, especially with the main gimmick here.
You’ll notice, I’m really hammering in how much this gimmick plays a part in my overall feelings of this game. It’s important to note this is an idle game, and really not meant to last, in fact, I wouldn’t put it past the dev to use this as more of a “tech demo” for something larger. The concept has weight, but overall, the game runs a bit flat, there’s only so many times you can rinse and repeat the same thing before it gets boring.
TRUSO clearly had a vision for this game, but really, even with it being indie and its cheap $2.99 price tag, it still feels rather flat and like something is missing, a deeper meaning to the game perhaps. It’s clear that the dev sought to kind of combine both worlds here — making a game that very much feels symbiotic to streamers, as well as appealing to a niche subsect of gamers.
I would only really recommend MyVoiceZoo to those who just have an itch to play a short and sweet indie idler with a gimmick that feels like it could’ve been used better.
Overview
