#zoochosis spoilers

[inkabelledesigns]

It's incredibly frustrating and exhausting to have to question every piece of media that passes your screen as to whether or not it was made with generative ai. I don't like that I can't trust people not to use the literal theft machine for their projects. Especially when it comes to indies.

Like, so there's a new indie horror game called Zoochosis, right? I have no stakes in Zoochosis, a game about a zookeeper that's trying to stop the spread of a mutation with the animals isn't really my speed. But I'd heard of the people who made it before, and I wanted to see if they'd grown. The devs behind it are also responsible for another game, Sparky Marky, which used ai voices, much to my frustration. I tuned into a stream today where someone was playing it, and after hearing a little bit of the dialogue from Doc, I asked if they'd hired actual voice actors. The streamer seemed unconvinced that they had. So I immediately turned it off and decided to go hunting instead, because I needed to know if real people voiced in Zoochosis. I needed to know if this dev team learned anything from their last experience.

Thankfully, there are credits for the voice actors of this game, but they're very far down, which is a little disappointing. The common threads between them is that most of them have a Fiverr page, so I imagine they were hired through there, but I can't confirm that. Frankly I don't love Fiverr given they are also run rampant with generative ai right now, it's not inspiring confidence. But a number of these voice actors have full on websites for their voice work that seem pretty legit to me. In the case of Doc's voice, Tim Stephenson, most of his work is in commercial voice over, not character voice acting, so that explains some of what I was hearing. Commercial VO and character acting for games, shows, etc. are different skills with different needs. Just because someone can do one very well doesn't necessarily mean they're perfectly equipped to do both, especially when I didn't see credits for a voice director here. Without a director, you're recording remotely and going off of your instincts, and while many actors can have great instinct for performing, getting a performance that fits the vision of the project still requires some communication.

I think it's too soon to tell if these actors were actually paid for voice acting, of if these are ai voices synthesized from their likeness. The game is so new that it hasn't shown up on their imdb credits or personal website credits yet, and until it does, I'm gonna be a little skeptical. At the same time, there are many explanations for why the voice acting sounded off. The dev team behind Zoochosis has a lot of names that lead me to believe they may not be native English speakers (and I'm fairly certain I've heard that from others too). Writing and editing dialogue for a game in a language you don't speak is NOT EASY! That's a big ask, and if that's what's happening here, then I'd actually be very impressed by the quality of what I'd heard. It's just...frustrating. I expect this from big corporations and companies, but Zoochosis is an indie game. The folks over at Clapperheads are a small team making this thing real. And I'm troubled by the idea of an indie team, something built on passion and a desire for creative freedom, using generative ai. They're not the only ones to do so. Pastra, a YouTuber who loves indie horror, has started a series of videos that play into this found footage/news broadcast horror story, and for part of it, they used ai generated images of photographs of children to represent the victims of the monster. And they defended this by saying that it was better to use these generated images of children than actual real children. And I'm just sitting here confused by that. Because like, the model that that generative ai is trained on is using stolen images of real children to make those fake photos. So not only does it fall under using a child's image without consent, but you don't even know what children you've stolen the visage from. That is not a good look. The same goes for Indigo Park. AI was used for the opening footage of Issac Indigo introducing the park, and that's part of why his facial movements are so janky. Mason from UniqueGeese at least apologized and said he'd do better next time, but like...the chapter 1 revamp came out and that wasn't changed.

It's small stuff and big stuff, but either way, it's not okay. Until generative ai is trained only on data that is given to its developers consensually, it is not a viable tool for creation. It's not ready to be tested until the ethics part is worked out, and even then, I don't think I'd ever want to touch it. Like I get it, game development is hard, and in the indie scene, it's hard to make it all come together. But also, I expect a project built on passion to at least TRY to be creative in its solutions, and for the people making it to know better than to use stolen content. I expect better. Maybe I'm wrong for expecting better. But I expect better.

I'm just...disappointed. It makes me feel like I can't touch anything in modern media. Like I may as well go back and only play games, watch shows/movies, and explore stories made before 2023. At least then I can trust that it was probably done without the use of the theft machine. That's such a hopeless thing, giving up on modern art and all the potential it comes with. I don't want to give up on art. I don't want to give up on people telling meaningful stories in modern times. Please, humans, keep making art with your own two hands. Please give me something to be hopeful for.

[phoenixfire-thewizardgoddess]

I tried using toxicus feralis

didn't work

tried using two lethal darts and then toxic feralis, as per the hidden floppy disc

also no dice, lost two gorillas

I think, when I get around to redoing it bc anytime i try to redo I end up having to do the fucking tutorial again (be nice if that was skippable)

that i should have used the animal blood to craft the parasite remover for the same issue the other animals had

took me a minute, but to be fair, there are no lights and that motherfucker is chasing you the whole time, so perhaps my thinking wasn't 100%

[trepans-apprentice]

well, got ONE of the endings in Zoochosis

warning:MAJOR spoilers beneath the cut

put this bitch back in the oven!! it needed more time!! the pacing was all over the place, I got softlocked 4 times on accident, and 7 on purpose.

The story... unfortunately, it doesn't make sense. theres a lot that just doesn't.. work. It almost feels like it was written by too many people, all with very opposing ideas on what the story should be.

The models. Oh my Fucking god. /negative AND /vpos

The rigs? Horrible. Way too much clipping for a 25$ game.

The models, both for the animals for the actual monsters? FUCKING AMAZING!!

Overall, it feels like there were too many ideas for one game, ESPECIALLY for a smaller studio.

That's it, there's just WAY too much they attempted to put into one game.

idk, maybe i would recommend it if it was $15. but right now, just watch someone else play it.

also yr game doesnt need multiple routes. most games are actually way better.

[pixlime]

Ok gang I played Zoochosis

My main takeaway is I really should have checked the studios previous work before buying

Spoilers below because I gotta talk about the one plot point I made it to

Granted, I literally played on day 1, so there's a chance some of my gripes have been patched out. But let's get into it

The dialogue is uh... something. It feels oddly stilted in that way where you kind of assume it's been fed through a translator a few times. Character's saying "by the way-" and then not changing the subject or just adding on to what they previously said. That kind of thing.

They also don't seem to respond like real people. You can rescue a woman pretty early on, and she seems...surprisingly calm about the whole situation. You even come across a human hand at one point and she's so calm she just flatly says "Woah is that a hand?" and takes it from you to just hold and look over for a minute.

I managed to softlock in my first run, and it took me 20 minutes to figure out I was stuck and not just stupid. Turns out, you can accidentally skip some important dialogue, and if you do and important quest marker never triggers. Saving that woman I just mentioned? Completely skipped on my first run, which then led to me missing MORE important dialogue, and then got locked from being able to deal with the first boss/monster.

The blood drawing mechanic. I do not care for it. I can understand making the most tedious part of the game important during the boss fights to add in tension/etc, but having to rely on when the animals just decide to calm down in order to take blood is a little infuriating. And the game explicitly tells you not to waste darts/ingredients for them, so I avoided using tranqs as much as possible.

The boss battles are a little underwhelming? As far as I can tell the only punishment for getting caught is a slight delay and a higher chance you'll lose the zoo animals.

I got so frustrated with the mechanics and just kind of... lack of interesting stuff happening that I only made it to the penguin enclosure before getting bored and shutting the game down.

If you're gonna make me deal with annoying, repetitive, or gross sound effects on loop, it's gotta be worth it.

I can't even talk much about the monster designs because I've only seen the one.

[bransons-emetophobia-warnings]

ZOOCHOSIS (2024)(VIDEO GAME)

ZOOCHOSIS IS NOT EMETOPHOBIA SAFE!

I found myself repeatedly caught off guard by my emetophobia and extremely triggered during my time watching a playthrough Slimecicle did with an interesting immersive twist of this game, (which is a bummer because the video I was watching was very entertaining, and I was very interested in the game's story). I'll try my best to tell you what I know, but spoiler alert: I recommend that emetophobes just avoid this one altogether.

There are many occasions where people and animals trigger emetophobia with absolutely no semblance of warning, including the character you play as, in a very sudden, realistic, first-person manner. It is very audibly visceral, and there is a very detailed, however unrealistic, but extremely triggering (in my experience), animation that goes along with it.

Animals will do so whenever the player messes up a diagnosis or a food mixture, or whenever the mutated ones are healed. I'm also under the impression that some of the morphed forms do this for unrelated reasons.

The player will do so more or less at random.

There are so many scenes like this that are so visceral that my recommendation is to avoid the game and any online playthroughs altogether if you are emetophobic. I am incapable of giving a warning for every scene.

These scenes can last anywhere from three to twenty seconds.

[trepans-apprentice]

ZOOCHOSIS spoilers

based on the phone call in the beginning. have a strange feeling 'none of this is real, paul conolly was just off his meds" thing