Hey hey! Fonz and Surrika here with a collaborative review on Hibernum Montreal’s Mobile App, Zootopia: Crime Files!
(Told you we’d review it one day)
In this review we will be looking over gameplay, graphics and some of the delightful characters especially made for this game. Surrika will be covering most of the gameplay portion of this review. Fonz will be covering a lot of the major updates that have happened to the game like changes in the art style and characters.
The rest we are going to tackle together, so find out more after the break!
Zootopia: Crime Files is a hidden object game available on the Google Play Market and iOS market for free. Developed by Hibernum Montreal and released in Australia in April 2016, and then worldwide in August 2016.
The game is based on a very simple mechanic of finding a list of objects at crime scenes around Zootopia! The game has a very loose over-arcing story the spans over all the cases… but talking about it would get into spoiler territory. So from this point on, I’ll be talking mainly about gameplay!
Nick and Judy will be given an assignment to find the guilty party of various cases by Chief Bogo. Every case has 9 crime scenes (with the exception of case 1 & 2 which only has 3 & 6 scenes respectfully.) For each of these scenes, you will be asked to find a list of objects but only one (or sometimes two) of these objects will help you progress the case.
At the start of each scene it will ask you to choose a partner to investigate the scene with, these partners will provide hints, each partner gives a different number of hints the highest being 5 and the lowest being 1. The partners you can choose are Chief Bogo, Fangmeyer, Rhinowitz, Grizzoli and Clawhauser.
Once you complete a crime scene, it will award points based on the number of objects found, the time it took you to find them, and how many hints you used. These points will then be calculated into a final score that will contribute to your stars.
Surrika Pro-Tip: The stars are not a rating of your performance- just the combined score of every time you have played the scene. The more you play it, the quicker you will get it to the 5 star ranking! Earning stars is important, but I will explain why later!
Once you have completed the scene Judy & Nick will make some kind of quip that will suggest what to do next, this could be talking to a suspect which will require a star or Analyzing evidence which will either take minutes or hours of real-time or just a star but sometimes both. So get to earning those stars!
But of course, it being a mobile game, you will encounter the dreaded… microtransactions,
This comes in the form of Z-Bucks which can be used to skip the waiting times of analysis. These Z-Bucks can be either bought with real money, or you can earn 2 Z-bucks by watching an ad (but this option isn’t always available.)
You can also use it to buy energy which is used to actually play the game. You can buy a juice box, pawpsicle and pie which give 10, 25 and 60 energy respectively.
Surrika Pro-tip: Channel your inner Gideon and only care about getting pies, do not give into the scamming ways of the pawpsicle or even bother with the cheap juicebox.
The cases are split up into three sections: bronze, silver and gold. The bronze section of the case is completed when you have found the guilty party of that particular case. This will unlock the silver section of the case called “additional investigations”, which will have you helping the other mammals of the case with meaningless tasks like fetching something from a cordoned off crime scene. Once you have solved all the mammals non-problems this will unlock the option to move on to the next case.
The gold section is completed by earning 5 stars at every crime scene. The gold section also gives you the option of buying the energy items I had previously mentioned with the leftover stars from that case that you earn which do not carry over to the next case.
Surrika Protip: Gold medal the cases and buy as many pies as you can and only use the pies if you have to earn another star. If you are stuck at a timer you are wasting energy and valuable exp.
Every time you complete a crime scene you earn exp which will contribute to your accounts level. The perks of leveling up are as follows…Your energy refills.
…That’s it, nothing else. You just get free energy.
So, it is important to keep track of your exp to reap the benefits of a fresh batch of energy- which is why you don’t want to waste energy items when you’re waiting for a timer. You don’t want to refill the energy and earn more exp and risk leveling up with a already maxed out energy meter.
After you’ve completed the silver section of a case, you will be asked to wait for 3 days before you can play the next case- even though you just spent stars to unlock it. Use these 3 days to earn more stars and pies on previous cases to earn the gold medals. With this technique you will have more pies than you know what to do with.
With the gameplay section out of the way, I turn it over to Fonz!
Hey everyone! Fonz here and I’m going to tell you all about some of the changes that were made in Zootopia: Crime Files that many do not know about!
Back when the game first came out in April, it was only available in Australia. After spending the time to make an Australian iCloud, I downloaded the app and started playing!
The main thing that they changed was Case 2. Originally the case was called “Melting Messes” and was held on the Jerry Jumbeaux’s Ice Cream shop! Vandals attacked it and it’s up to Nick and Judy to help solve the case. After the game was released World-Wide, the case changed to “Seeds of Doubt” and instead focused on a Pawn Shop instead. It still featured the same characters and the almost exact same dialogue as the case before.
There are some other changes that were made to the game as well. Nick originally wore his Hawaiian shirt while working with Judy. Now while that’s obviously not correct since he’s a police officer on this case, he did look great if I do say so myself.
The recurring character Raul the pig was originally named Paul in “Melting Messes” but was changed to Raul after the update. You can thank Surrika for that catch, as I totally missed the name change!
The loading screen was originally green as well, and was later changed to purple. You can actually see Nick in his Hawaiian shirt on this one. It’s great that they did keep a model of him in that outfit as I really enjoy that look.
Fangmeyer’s model was also changed. She received some more details on her, but if you look closely you’ll see she is now cross eyed. Why they added that, I do not know, but you can tell something was added to her coffee because she seems to be having a good time.
The Fur-ensic sloth was a new addition as well as the small scanner you get to use when you analyze items. It’s a nice touch and does make sense that a sloth would be analyzing the items as it can take several hours before it’s done! Now, back to Surrika!
Here I am yet again, but this time I am going to discuss the overarching story and some of the characters you will met along the way.
Each case has it’s own little self contained story but one name keeps popping back up time and time again and that is Sequoia Towers. It first appears to just be a apartment complex with some pretty heavy investors pumping some major bucks into it. Later on in case 5 or 6 you get down to what Sequoia Towers is about. All I’ll tell you, without spoiling anything, is that it’s actually a front for something far more sinister.
There is yet more to be told about the story, but I don’t want to spoil the whole thing- and not even I have all the answers yet as cases are believed to be still in development.
We now move onto the characters. This game boasts a plethora of brand new characters such as:
Detective Oates, An old horse detective who Judy apparently really admires the work of.
Le Rouge, a suave Red Panda and art thief who spends more of his time hitting on officers than running from them.
Phil the Raccoon, a no nonsense Raccoon who won’t hesitate to play the “mask” card given the chance, so watch your wording around him!
Those are but a pawful of the new characters this game offers. The game also offers the returning cast of Zootopia including Nick, Judy, Bogo, Flash and Finnick!
Final Verdict, If you want more Zootopia then yes, definitely download this. It definitely does deliver more of that. While the wait times can be a bit of a tedium, if you follow my tips you shouldn’t find yourself waiting around for long! Hidden Object games can be a good time waster when on public transportation or even before bed if you need help nodding off. I personally love this game and am waiting eagerly for the next case!
This is Surrika, your Friendly Neighbourhood Meerkat, and Fonz, the Color Blended Red Wolf, signing out!
I play it for the dialogue. Nick is a fantastic. Still waiting for the next update.
I got the app with a canadian itunes account to get it as soon as it launched, great app. Aside from the case exchange with case 2, I have like 50 pawpsicles and over 200 bux (compensation for case swap). Ive beat it all, and to top it off, I'm a fremium, so no $ spent, and I patiently await the next update.
I cracked all levels and waiting for their update of new levels!!!
I cracked all level waiting for more Filesidaly
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