How to play PartyZoo

PartyZoo is a party game for two to six people in a browser, and it has one rule that everything else hangs on: every animal you own speaks in a voice you recorded for it. It farms in that voice, it fights in that voice, and when somebody beats it and takes it, it keeps shouting in your voice from their side. This guide covers a whole match.

The first minute

Everybody starts with 10 gold and an empty island. Open the zoo book and adopt your first animal — 10 gold is exactly a duck. Before it joins you, you give it a voice: hold the record button, wait for the start sound, make your noise and let go. A take has to last between 0.7 and 3 seconds; anything shorter or longer is refused, with the length shown. Then name it and choose its job.

Farmers and attackers

A farmer calls out every few seconds in the voice you gave it, and every call pays you gold. Bigger animals call a little less often and earn a lot more per call. Farmers never attack and never leave home. An attacker shouts with every hit and guards your island: the ones at your camp hold the camp, and the ones out in their habitat guard their own patch.

Early on, farm. Gold is your whole economy until the gates open, and a zoo of farmers is what pays for the attackers you will want later.

Your voice matters

The effort you put into a take changes how hard that animal hits, and a farmer's calls pay a little more for a great take too. A committed, full-throated noise makes a strong attacker; a mumble barely stings — though even a silent take does a little damage, so no animal is useless. After you record, the game tells you how the take went. Not happy with it? Record it again for 50 gold.

You get a voice too: record a shout for your keeper and press T, or the Shout button on a phone, to yell it at whoever is on your island.

The zoo book: all 30 animals

The book holds thirty animals, each a silhouette until you have owned one. You can adopt each kind once, for good: lose it and it stays out of reach. Prices climb from a 10-gold duck to a 4,500-gold elephant, and every animal lives in its own habitat on your island — the farm animals at your camp, the rest out in the forest, the snow, the savanna and the jungle. Gold per call is what a farmer earns with a decent take.

Visiting a friend's zoo

Three minutes in, the gates open. Press Visit, tick the attackers that come along — farmers stay home and keep earning — and pick whose island to land on. A visit lasts up to five minutes, and your squad is away for all of it. While you are there, one button switches between All animals attack and Stop attacking, and Send animals home brings your squad back while you stay.

One thing to know before you send anybody in: an animal that has hit or been hit in the last few seconds cannot go home until the fight lets go of it. A squad cannot simply be pulled out of a brawl it is losing.

Capturing, and the poof

Beat an animal and it joins your zoo on the spot, still shouting in its old owner's voice — the best moment in the game. You can keep two of any kind. Beat a third of a kind you already have two of and it goes poof: a puff of cloud, its voice one last time and lower, and it is gone for good. Nobody gets it.

Defending your island

When somebody lands on your island a bell rings and a banner says who. Turn ATTACK on and every attacker on your island goes after them, wherever they are. Animals heal at your camp or back on their own spot, and keepers at the camp, two points a second; a visiting keeper who runs out of health is sent home.

How a match is won

Take every animal a keeper has and they are out, and the last keeper with animals wins on the spot. If the clock runs out first — 8, 15 or 25 minutes, the host's choice — the keeper with the most animals wins, and gold breaks a tie.

Five tips

• —Farm first: two or three farmers before your first attacker.
• —Save your loudest, most committed take for your best attacker.
• —Two of a kind is the most you can keep, so raid for kinds you do not have yet.
• —At the whistle it is the number of animals that counts, not their size.
• —Leave something at home: farmers do not defend.

After the whistle

The result shows everybody's final count, and you can download the match as a vertical short or a widescreen video — the best fights, with everybody's voices in them, and no watermark.