Human Entertainment was a Japanese game development company known for its unique games such as Clock Tower, Fire Pro Wrestling, The Firemen, and the ambitious Mizzurna Falls. Puppet Zoo Pilomy stands out because it’s an educational video game and one of the lesser known titles by Human Entertainment. It’s nowhere near the best game in the company’s history, but it has one unique feature. The player can reassemble the body parts of an animal. As a result, Human Entertainment created a game that allows for the creation of strange-looking creatures.
The premise is that a scientist named Dr. Polygon has created a machine that allows for the creation of new animals called “puppets”. Your goal is to create puppets and donate them, sell them, or release them in one of several habitats so they can eat and roam. As expected, the audio and visual elements of Puppet Zoo Pilomy are for children. Cheerful music plays against a backdrop of vibrant colors. Parts of the world and the user interface look like they were drawn with crayons. The characters have cartoonish designs and the world has a toy-like quality to it. The fuzzy, pre-rendered backgrounds and the checkered floors are reminiscent of computer-generated imagery from the 1990s. The game’s box art would be perfect as a cover to a magazine designed to teach children about animals. There’s an equivalent of a See ‘N Say toy in the game where you can select an animal and hear the sound it makes. Learning about animals is perhaps one of the most prevalent activities in educational media. It’s no surprise that Human Entertainment’s first foray into educational video games was centered around animals.
The gameplay in Puppet Zoo Pilomy is comprised of exploring a small town, talking to characters, and creating puppets. You create puppets by spending hearts and combining the parts of different animals. After creating a puppet and naming it, you can donate it, sell it, or release it in one of several habitats called “worlds”. Other activities include visiting a movie theater, taking a guided zoo tour, and listening to the game’s music. Since this is a game intended for children, it lacks enemies, game over screens, or complex tasks. There isn’t a main goal besides creating enough puppets to unlock the credits sequence.
Puppet Zoo Pilomy is more of a tool for assembling 3D models than a source to learn about animals. The game does not provide any information about animals. The closest the game comes to being educational are the short clips in the movie theater. The only incentive to create a puppet that looks exactly like an animal is to watch it move. The simple gameplay and lack of interesting objectives make Puppet Zoo Pilomy more of a curiosity than a game I would play for entertainment. However, the ability to create puppets by merging parts of different animals elevates this child-friendly game into something that is bizarre, a little uncomfortable, and akin to creepypasta games on the internet.
In Greek mythology, a chimera was a hybrid creature that was part lion, part snake, and part goat. Puppet Zoo Pilomy is more entertaining and a bit disturbing if you treat it as a tool to churn out chimeras. For example, you can combine the head of a raccoon, the body of a mammoth, and the legs of a tiger. If you don’t create a normal-looking animal, you will hear a track that sounds distorted. The ability to make chimeras in Puppet Zoo Pilomy isn’t shown on the game’s packaging. The screenshots on the back of the box show animals assembled with the correct parts. In a blog post, a staff member of Human Entertainment reminisced about the game. A magazine described Puppet Zoo Pilomy as a “terrifying” game where the player could create creatures. After reading this magazine, the staff member played the game and couldn’t help but laugh. Puppet Zoo Pilomy went from being an educational video game to an instrument capable of building chimeras. In another blog post, the staff member reveals that human parts nearly made it into the final version of the game. Someone’s face was photographed and included in the game’s textures.
There are two elements that make the game seem sinister. The first is some of the bizarre dialogue by the town’s inhabitants. One character will ask you if they are a depressing person. Another character wonders if Dr. Polygon’s assistants are human. That same character will accuse you of lying if you compliment Dr. Polygon’s appearance. The second element that contributes to the game’s sinister undertone is hidden away. There’s text in the save file that can be seen by using a program capable of managing the data on PlayStation memory cards.
“Pilomy sobbing in fear,” the text in parenthesis basically reads.
Pilomy is the brown creature that follows you during gameplay. The text in parentheses changes after you save your game ten times. As a result, a story is told when you combine all the sentences. It depicts a battle between Pilomy and the boy you play as.
(in a crisis)
(Pilomy in pursuit)
(Determination with three hairs)
(Fight to the death)
(Pilomy running out of power)
(The 100th escape and the first time)
After about 101 saves, new text will stop appearing and saving your game won’t progress the story anymore.
Puppet Zoo Pilomy would’ve been unremarkable without its sinister undertones and the ability to make chimeras. This is a game where doing the incorrect thing is more fun than doing the thing that was intended to be educational.
Information about the game came from this page: https://w.atwiki.jp/gcmatome/pages/8324.amp
