Though many console game players may have never heard of it, there's a superpopular puzzle game out there called Bejeweled. It's appeared in numerous forms on the PC, as well as on PDAs, cell phones, and even the Xbox (via Microsoft's fledgling Xbox Live Arcade service). Like most puzzle games, it's a natural fit for handheld platforms like, say, the Nintendo DS. That's where Ignition Entertainment's latest puzzle game, Zoo Keeper, comes in. Zoo Keeper is a shameless clone of PopCap Games' pervasive puzzler, but it replaces jewels with animals and includes a few different modes to choose from. And like the game it gets most of its ideas from, Zoo Keeper is a surprisingly addictive puzzle game.

There's a bit of a story to Zoo Keeper, but as you'd expect, it's extremely thin and not at all relevant to the action. You play as a zoo keeper. You must keep the animals orderly by lining them up in rows of three or more. The game gives you an eight-by-eight grid full of different animal heads. Your interaction with the board is limited to swapping one animal for any animal that's directly adjacent to it. The catch is that you can only make a move if it lines up three or more of the same animal in a row, which causes them to disappear from the board. With those tiles gone, everything else drops down, and new tiles fill in the holes at the top. In the main mode, your only enemy is time, and it's constantly running out. However, by making moves, you can stack more time onto an onscreen meter. Additionally, if you're having trouble seeing any matches, you can click on a pair of binoculars for a quick hint, though these hints are limited. If you find yourself in a spot where there aren't any possible moves, the board clears, you're given a bonus, and a new board is thrown up in its place so you can continue. While you can play Zoo Keeper with the D pad and buttons, this is one game that really plays much, much better with the stylus.