I first became aware of Uwe Rosenburg’s New York Zoo in an online video highlighting the top upcoming releases to watch out for. Uwe’s design, polyominoes and the most adorable animeeples…Sign. Me. Up. Animal acquisition, acquire the identified 2 animals. You can also, if you don’t like the options, take a single animal of your choice. These are placed into an enclosure with the same animal type or one of your free houses. That’s a house with nothing in it rather than a pub. I’m sure zoo keepers frown on taking a penguin to the bar. We Built This City Zoo

New York Zoo | Board Game | BoardGameGeek

Of note: Every Enclosure tile is made up of a number of squares, each square can only ever hold a single animal, and no Enclosure can ever hold more than a single species of animal. Animal Acquisition The same rules apply for the core elements of enclosure placing and breeding as per the main game. This includes the special breeding rule of the 2-3 player variant. But behind a silly theme with an equally silly (but wonderful) artwork, lies a deep strategic eurogame that uses worker placement, resource management, and bidding as its main mechanisms. It’s not for casual players, as the learning process is lengthy, but the game is full of variety and offers different strategies.

Breeding

New York Zoo is a lovely, lightly strategic tile-placement game that is so visually appealing. Its gentle racing gameplay isn’t too stress-inducing, and as such, I find it a calming, enjoyable experience to play.

New York Zoo Review | Board Games - Zatu Games UK

New York Zoo seems fairly straightforward at first glance, but it isn’t until you start playing that you realize just how meaty it really is. It starts with the Elephant. When it comes time for you to move the Elephant you are faced with several critical decisions beyond just deciding which tile you want to add to your board or which animals you want to collect.

Animal Acquisition

As soon as the tile is placed onto your board, you MUST move at least one animal into the Enclosure. This animal can come from one of your houses or even one of your other Enclosure tiles (as long as moving that animal does not cause the tile it is moving from to become empty). This, of course, means that you cannot add an Enclosure tile to your board if there are no animals that you can legally add to it. A maximum of 2 animals can be added to a newly placed Enclosure, but they must come from different places. This player has elected to move flamingos from existing flamingo Enclosures onto the newly placed tile. In a 2- or 3-player game, at least 1 successful breeding of the specified animal type will trigger an additional breeding in a different Enclosure than any that have been added to so far during the current breeding so long as that Enclosure contains at least 2 animals. Thoughts New York Zoo is an abstract puzzle game in which you’re trying to complete your zoo. Do this by placing animal enclosures and attractions to complete your construction board, before your opponents.

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All in all, the game works. And it’s nice to have some games that don’t feel like the world ended when you lose!I do wish sometimes there were some point-scoring objectives, to deepen the strategic elements. I’d love to have certain restrictions on where attractions could be placed for scoring points, for example. Or trying to end your game with an enclosure full of Meerkats. I suppose this is always something you could house rule if you were trying to make the game more challenging for yourself. In New York Zoo, the players take on the roles of developers as they work to construct animal parks and fill them with various animals and Attractions. Each player begins the game with an empty zoo board and a couple of animals. On their turn, they will either choose from a selection of polyomino tiles to add to their boards as animal Enclosures or choose from a selection of animals to add to their boards in an effort to fill their already existing Enclosures. If the elephant passes a breeding spot, anyone with those animals in their enclosures get to add a couple more. Once you’ve completed an enclosure you return those animals and take any amusement tile of your choice. These are your popcorn stands and other human distractions – the sizes and variety of these means that you’re able to fill the gaps left by your polyomino pieces. Which is important as the first player to fill in their board wins.