New York Zoo board game review!

Where mommy and daddy animals meet.

Build animal enclosures, introduce new animals and raise their offspring.

New York Zoo Game Play

TL:DR You add animals into tiles on the zoo to fill them. Filling them allows you to take more tiles and you need to fill your zoo first to win.

Theme

“New York Zoo” isn’t technically a real zoo as far as I’m aware although there are a tonne of Zoos n NY.

But, the gameplay is abstract anyway as far as I’m concerned.

Setup

You have to stack up 15 piles of tiles in a certain order from the lighter 5 square tiles to the darker 7 square ones. I believe that’s the only tricky bit.

The rest is a dump-and-go job?

Components & Artwork

The components are really nice. The animal meeples not only look good but being 3D they make adding and removing from the player board easier.

The art is minimal but cute.

Ease of Teaching

The basics of the game with the tiles and the breeding and stuff is very straightforward.

What to do when you fill a tile and where you can put animals and why is a little fiddley.

New York Zoo Summary

I pretty much compare every light tile laying game I play to Barenpark and this one with the animal theme is more relevant than any of them.

NYZ is a bit different in that the tile laying is just the beginning, you then need to fill them with animals. Doing so lets you get more tiles and pushes you to victory. So your action can’t just be to take the biggest tile available.

Filling tiles up with animals gives you access to the smaller and more versatile attraction tiles that you need to fill those gaps you left.

It is very much multiplayer solitaire which I usually don’t care about but I guess I’m just used to Patchwork where you’re focused on what the opponent might do.

But it is an enjoyable and cute game and well worth a go.

Jesta ThaRogue