Zooloretto - Our Family Game of 2007
In the second of our series of articles picking out the best games of 2007, we have selected Zooloretto as the Game Stack Family Game of 2007.
Using the same basic mechanism as the earlier Coloretto, Michael Schacht has crafted a delightful game that works on a number of levels for players of all ages.
Up to five players each have a board with four zoo enclosures on it, each enclosure containing spaces for different numbers of animals.
The animals are depicted on tiles with 11 of each type of eight animals including elephants, giraffes, camels and flamingos.
Each round, players take it in turns to load animals onto delivery trucks. Players can take trucks (but only one) whenever they want and must then distribute the animals from their truck around their zoo. The key to the game is that you may only keep animals of the same type within an enclosure and any “spare” animals must be left in your barn. These may be bought by other players but, if not, they will count against you at the end of the game.
Some of the tiles will be coins rather than animals and you receive a financial bonus for filling an enclosure but money is always at a premium in this game and can be crucial because it enables you to move animals around, buy them from opponents’ barns and even discard them.
The aim of the game is to maximise the spaces filled in your enclosures and the player that achieves this whilst minimising the number of animals in their barn will win the game.
No review can do justice to the neat way in which the different elements of this game blend together to create a truly excellent entertainment that achieves that rare distinction of being a game that has very little luck and yet can be played by young and old alike with equal enjoyment and on more or less equal terms.
