Going to the Zoo with Bokuju

I took Bokuju to the zoo last week. Not for testing: the app had been live for two weeks and I'd already thrown enough test data at Bokudjin to know it works. I just wanted to see what happened when I actually played it properly.

Four hours. One zoo. The mission: build the biggest collection possible in a single afternoon.

Here's how it went.

The logistics

Zoo photography is genuinely hard. Most animals are either too far away, moving constantly, or behind glass that destroys the image. Bokudjin needs a reasonably clear shot to identify correctly. Not perfectly sharp, phone cameras are fine, but enough that you can tell what it actually is.

My rough success rate across the afternoon was about 75%. Some creatures had their back to me, no worries mr tortoise. Some were too blurry and some just look so similar to other things. Still, 75% across a zoo is a lot of cards...but it did help me dream up the challenge feature. More on that in another post

The highlights

The lioness was the first card that stopped me in my tracks. She was lying completely flat in the sun, barely moving, looking thoroughly unbothered by everyone photographing her. Bokudjin gave her a Legendary and I think that's correct: there's something about the way a lioness at rest looks like she's conserving energy specifically for something you don't want to be there for. The card art came out beautifully — ink wash, long horizontal composition, the kind of card you put at the front of your deck.

The mountain chicken frog was the surprise of the day. I had no idea these existed before I walked past the enclosure — they're enormous, native to the Caribbean, critically endangered, and named after the fact that they allegedly taste like chicken. Bokudjin identified it immediately and gave it a Rare with high HP, which tracks for something that size. The card has this quality of deep ink pooling in the shadows of the skin texture that makes it look almost three-dimensional.

The king cobra I was genuinely unsure about. It wasn't doing the iconic hood thing. Just coiled loosely, head up, watching. Without the hood it looks much more like any other large snake and I half-expected Bokudjin to come back with something generic. It didn't. King cobra, correct, Legendary card with a move set that felt appropriately threatening. The art also happened to be the natsukashii variant, which was cool.

What Bokudjin got wrong

A few, most notably The Philippine crocodile and the Pygmy Hippo. Both were half submerged

The croc submerged in murky water with just the top of its head visible, which in fairness is not a lot to work with. Bokudjin came back with spectacled caiman, which...yeah I get but I kinda enjoy my collection being correct and when the zoo sign post is right next to me...really felt I need to sort this out.

The final tally

A solid afternoon. Multiple Legendaries, a handful of Rares, and a whole load of entries for my Bokupedia. The zoo gives you breadth: species from biomes you'll probably never visit, in one place, all capturable in an afternoon.

If you've taken Bokuju somewhere interesting (a coastal rockpool, a nature reserve, a market with pigeons) I'd genuinely like to hear about it. Let me know.