Zooba

Is Zooba safe for kids?

Zooba is a fair choice for a teenager who wants a cartoon battle royale, as long as a parent watches the shop. Wildlife Studios keeps strangers at arm's length: in battle, players can only send preset emotes, and typed chat lives inside clans. The concerns are commercial. The game tracks players across other apps for advertising, sells crates of random characters, and sells each new character for money before it can be won.

We score it 56/100, level with its stablemate Tennis Clash (56) and just below Brawl Stars (58). It sits one point above Sniper 3D (55), which has open global chat and an 18+ rating.

Zooba is a large game. It has about 511,000 ratings on the US App Store and more than 100 million downloads on Google Play. In October 2026 it ranked in the top 100 grossing action games on iPhone in 24 of the 27 countries we checked.

How old do you have to be to play Zooba?

The ratings do not quite agree. Apple rates Zooba 13+, citing frequent cartoon violence, contests, loot boxes, advertising and messaging. Google Play rates it Everyone 10+ for fantasy violence and mild blood, with warnings for user interaction and random items. Wildlife's terms, shared by all its games, set the minimum age at 13 and require a parent's agreement for players under 18.

So an Android phone set to allow games for 10-year-olds will let a 10-year-old install a game whose maker says it is for 13 and up. Wildlife does not check ages itself. In its ECA Digital report for Brazil it says it relies on the app stores' parental-control signals to adjust the game for younger players.

Who does your child play with?

Mostly strangers, but with little room to talk. A solo match drops 20 or 30 players into one map, depending on the format in rotation. The help centre says solo matchmaking uses each character's trophies and level, plus the player's region, and not age. In Big Teams mode, a player who queues alone is put with four random teammates of similar trophies, and in Duo with one random partner.

During battle the only messages are emotes. Team emotes such as Stick Together, Warning and Like are visible only to teammates, and taunts aimed at opponents are preset animations, not text.

Clans are where typed chat happens. A player can join one after reaching League 3, and clans hold up to 50 members. Owners can approve each request or switch on Auto Approve, which lets anyone in. Players can report a clan chat message, a username or a clan name under categories that include harassment, sexual content and threats to a child, and reports are anonymous. The report form asks for an email address.

Wildlife says an AI moderator censors messages that break its code of conduct, with human review of reports. Its EU transparency report for 2025 covers all its games. It took more than 256,700 enforcement actions, and child safety was the second-largest category of abuse it detected, at 15.7%.

What the game collects

Apple's privacy label for Zooba lists identifiers and usage data as used to track you across other companies' apps and websites. Location, email, gameplay content, user ID and diagnostics appear as collected but not linked to you. Google Play's form goes further. It says Zooba collects the list of installed apps and in-app messages, and shares device IDs and approximate location with other companies for advertising and analytics.

The privacy policy, effective since 3 March 2023, allows interest-based ads "including through cross-device tracking" and names Meta, Google and AppLovin among the ad partners. Wildlife says it does not sell personal data, but shares it for advertising unless you opt out through its web form. Zooba TV, a daily rewards track on the main screen, pays gems and items for watching ads.

Accounts are only as safe as the login behind them. Progress is saved by linking Facebook, Apple, Google or Game Center, and the help centre says a link cannot be undone. We found no two-step login of Wildlife's own, no bug bounty and no reported breach.

Crates, early access and clan packages

The App Store lists loot boxes, and Wildlife publishes the crate odds. They drop fast as a collection grows: with 10 or more characters, a Gold Crate has about a 1.2% chance of holding a new one. A Zoo Cage, filled with keys from the Battle Pass, gives a guaranteed new character instead.

Two features push spending harder. Every new character starts in an Early Access period in which it can only be bought. And each gem purchase creates a Clan Package that clanmates can claim for 24 hours, so buying earns gems for the whole clan.

US prices on the App Store run from $0.99 for a Handful of Gems to $19.99 for offers, with ZOO VIP at $9.99. The Premium Pass is an auto-renewing subscription with a 3-day free trial, billed by Apple or Google. Wildlife says in-game purchases are generally not refundable. If it refunds a purchase a child made without permission, it bans that game account for good.

How to set up Zooba for a teenager

1. On Android, set the Play Store age limit to 13 rather than relying on the Everyone 10+ rating.
2. Turn on Ask to Buy on iPhone or purchase approval on Google Play before the first crate offer appears.
3. Explain early-access characters and clan packages, which are designed to make buying feel urgent or social.
4. Steer your teen to a small clan whose owner approves each member, and show how to report a message.
5. Link the account to Apple or Google sign-in and turn on two-step verificationTwo-factor authenticationSigning in with a second proof of identity on top of your password, such as a code from an app, a security key or a passkey.More in the glossary for that account.
6. Refuse tracking when the iPhone asks, and use Wildlife's privacy form to opt out of ad sharing.

How we scored it

Regulatory record (87) is the strongest factor, with no fines or orders found but no regulator review either. Privacy (46) is the weakest, because the game tracks players for ads and Google Play lists installed apps and messages among the data collected. Scams and harmful content (56) credits emote-only battles and published crate odds, but deducts for loot boxes, paid early-access characters and a Google Play rating below the terms' minimum age.