Zooloretto

How do you win?

Choose one species for each enclosure of your zoo, filling the available spots in each one to earn points. The game ends when all the tiles have been dealt, and the player with the most points wins.

How do you play?

Each player begins with an empty zoo in front of them, consisting of a barn and three enclosures, ready to welcome their residents. In the centre of the table are empty delivery trucks, equal to the number of players. Each truck will deliver up to three animal tiles (or other special tiles) to each player’s zoo in each round.  

On their turn, a player decides to either to take a tile from the bag and place it on one of the trucks; take a delivery truck and claim its contents for their zoo, ending their participation in this round of the game; or carry out one money action. Play then continues clockwise, with the next player selecting one of these actions. Once the last truck has been claimed by a player and its contents unloaded, the round is over and the empty trucks are placed back in the middle of the table, ready for the next round of deliveries.

The game tiles include eight species of animal, such as gorillas, flamingos, pandas and chimpanzees. Players score points by filling all the available spaces in a zoo enclosure, or by leaving only one space unoccupied (although this is less lucrative). The animals are fussy and so different species cannot be mixed within an enclosure, and any animals that don’t fit in your enclosures must be stored in your barn. Watch out though, since any animals left in the barn at the end of the game will be worth negative points!

The delivery trucks can bring other benefits for your business in the form of snack stalls and coins. Snack stalls give you victory points – although only two per type (species?) of stand – and they can boost your points in enclosures that aren’t at capacity and would otherwise score zero. You can use coins to help out your zoo in a variety of ways, such as purchasing a new enclosure, paying to discard an unwanted tile from your barn, or purchasing an animal tile from another player’s barn. You can also pay to move or swap sets of tiles between your barn and enclosures.

Notice the round tiles with baby animals on? These come into play when you have a fertile male and female animal in an enclosure, which instantly creates a new baby in your zoo! Handy for filling up a space in your enclosure.

Why play it?

There is more to this game than first meets the eye, especially when it comes to loading the delivery trucks. Because of the limited number of species, two or more zoos are likely to be in the market for the same type of animal, sparking rivalries early in the game. If your zoo is specialising in, say, chimpanzees, you may be tempted to load up a truck with chimp tiles – but this strategy will likely only lead to the next player promptly claiming the truck and its bounty.

Therefore, the clever truck selection mechanic generally forces players to split species across trucks and take their rivals’ menageries into account, perhaps weighing down a truck that looks appealing to an opponent with a tile that is useless or even a hindrance to them. You could also attempt to make a truck so appealing to another player that they claim it before it is full, exiting the round early and leaving you with fewer players to compete with for the remaining trucks, which are likely to have more tiles on.

Added to this layer of ‘diplomacy’ is the gamble of whether to continue drawing tiles or claim a truck that would suit your zoo, even if it’s not full – what if another player claims it before your next turn, or the final tile becomes a costly surplus animal in your barn?

Your zoo is likely to be strapped for cash as coins are generally pretty hard to come by, so don’t expect to rely too heavily on coin actions. However, any coins you do gain are very handy for adjusting things in your zoo. It is a huge relief when a player buys an unwanted animal from your barn, as your bank balance goes up and you avoid a potential victory point penalty at the end of the game.

Verdict?

In Zooloretto, tactics and strategy hinge on a deceptively simple mechanic. Having said that, the scores are usually very close and the game is easy to pick up. Filling your zoo with exotic animals is a lot of fun!