TUAW's Daily iPhone App: ZooKeeper DX Touch Edition

ZooKeeper DX is a game that's appeared in quite a few forms -- it was a big game at the Nintendo DS' launch back in the day, and has since appeared online in Flash form (though how official that is, I'm not sure). But the game by Japanese developer Kiteretsu has now arrived on the App Store, and it's emerged as a cute, if not very complicated, match-3 title.

This gameplay should be old hat to you by now: Click the animals to switch them around, and try to match up three of a kind. But where ZooKeeper sticks out is its style -- the cute pixelated animals are really fun to look at and play around with, and a power-up that will mark out where your matches are is also well-done.

There are two modes to play through, though they don't offer much other than just the match goals you have to meet. It's true -- match-3 gameplay has changed quite a bit since this game first appeared (see the Puzzle Quest series for my favorite version of it), and ZooKeeper doesn't really take advantage of those innovations.

But it's still fun, and Game Center integration as well as future updates (there's already been one big one to fix a big technical bug with the screen) are added incentive. The title is available at a launch price of US $1.99, and you can get two bucks out of this one pretty easily, especially if you're a match-3 fan.