Here is my take after 2 plays with 2 players. Both my wife and I really liked it and at the end of the first game we both agreed that there is a lot more to this game than initially meets the eye. I have seen a lot of comments that this is lite family material but that is not the impression I got after my games at all. My brain really hurt! You have to pay attention all the time or you are sure to lose with competitive players.

Let me first review the basics of the game before commenting. You start off with 8 auction tokens in the first season of play and the game lasts for 5 seasons. In each season there are 5 face up tiles that will be auctioned off one at a time. The auctioning is done in secret and the bids revealed at the same time. The highest bidder receives the tile in question and places it in their zoo. Ties are broken using a great mechanism of a flag pole with each players flag arranged one over the other. The top flags player wins a bidding tie and then that flag gets moved to the bottom. All players participate in each auction and you can bid zero tokens. I will note that it is possible to actually win a tile with a bid of zero tokens, if everyone else bids zero as well and your flag is at the top of the flagpole. At the end of each season, each player receives a number of auction tokens equal to the number of tiles in their zoo.

Each tile has two different types of animals (out of a total of 5 types) and a random number of trees along with random paths. There is also a number of stars associated with each animal on the tile that correspond to that animals attraction value, these range from one to three stars. Each player initially starts with a entrance tile that has two paths running off it. All tiles must be placed so that the paths line up with each other. This takes some thought and foresight so as to not cut yourself off later in the game and is a great part of the game in my opinion. The distribution of the tiles should be mentioned as well. There are 25 tiles (five for each of five seasons). The tiles can be grouped based on the number of paths that lead off each tile. About a quarter of the tiles have three paths leading off them. These are the hardest tiles to place well since you have a limited number of options to play off these tiles in subsequent turns. As a compensation, each of these tiles contains trees. The next group of tiles has four paths leading off each tile. This group makes up about 50% of the tiles. Tiles that contain five exit paths make up 20% of the total and there is a single tile that has six exit paths, two from each long edge and one from each short edge. The attraction value of the animals on the tiles is fairly evenly distributed over each of the groups, with both one star and three star animals appearing on 3, 4, 5 and 6 exit path tiles.

The object is to place the tiles so that you can group your animals (your strength is the total number stars in vertically or horizontally adjacent animal types) as well as to create path loops. The trees on the tiles are also important for scoring but these don't have to be arranged in any particular way.

Scoring is based on attracting visitors to your zoo, either from the pile of visitors or from visitors in other players zoos. After placing a tile in a zoo, the player adds up the number of grouped stars of a particular type and compares that to the rest of the players. If a zoo has multiple groups of a single color, only one of those groups score. The top two players in a given animal type get visitors, 2 visitors for the 1st place, 1 visitor for 2nd place. Ties are broken by the most recently placed tile getting the advantage. The exception to this is if only one player has an animal type, then that player only gets a single visitor. Once there are 3 visitors in the game for a given animal type then only these three visitors remain for that type and get moved around from player to player as each tile is placed. The same goes for the trees. The player with the most trees gets 2 visitors and the player with the 2nd most trees gets 1 visitor, ties are broken the same way they are for animals. So between the 5 animal types and the trees there are only 18 points to be divided up at the end of each season when scoring occurs. The other way to get points is to create loops using the paths on the tiles. Each loop that is created in your zoo brings in one visitor. These visitors can never be taken away by the other players, unlike those for animals and trees.

Scoring takes place at the end of each season (after 5 tiles have been auctioned off). Each player adds up the number of visitors in their zoo. At the end of the 1st season, this total is your score. At the end of the 2nd season you multiply the total by 2, at the end of the 3rd season the total is multiplied by 3 and so on up to 5x at the end of the 5th season (end of the game). Your total score is the sum of your scores at the end of the five seasons.

Now for some of my comments.

Runaway Leader?

Let me say that I did not experience the "runaway leader" problem based on "the rich get richer" syndrome some have mentioned. I did experience the runaway leader problem but that was because of poor play on my part and nothing more (my wife kicked my butt!). Money can be tight in this game, but in our games it ended up equaling out since that was the case on both sides of the table. I can imagine that with inexperienced players there might be more of a problem with a runaway leader due to the number of things that each player needs to keep track of in the game but I would bet with a few more plays under everyone's belt this problem will become less of a problem.

Decisions, Decisions!

There is a lot to keep track of in this game. Each seasons tiles are all turned face up at the start of the season so everyone gets to examine all 5 tiles before bidding begins. Trees are the easiest to examine so lets start there. A quick glance at the tiles up for auction will tell you how likely it is that you will get points for visitors on trees at the end of the season since all trees in a zoo are simply added up to determine the major and minor positions. Animal types get a little more tricky since you not only have to consider what you need to grow your zoo but also what other players might need to grow their zoos. If you only concentrate on your own zoo, you are only looking at half the picture. This is because adding tiles to your zoo can gain you visitors but other players adding tiles to their zoos can steal away your visitors, both of which will impact your score at the end of the season.

Bidding on a tile that has animals that you don't need but will end up keeping that tile out of another players zoo that does need the tile might actually help your score, especially if you can use the tile for a loop. You also have to carefully consider the layout of the paths on the tiles. Each tile can have paths exit off it at up to 6 different locations. However, each tile only has between 3 and 6 exit paths. The more exits from the tile, the easier it is to place the tile and expand from it with future placements. On more than one occasion, I gained a tile with good animals or trees only to find that placing that tile ended up being more difficult that I thought. Placing the tile in a good position subsequently hindered my placement of future tiles and inhibited my ability to score with future tiles. This is a key point since visitors scored in later seasons score more points that those scored early in the game (5 points per visitor in the 5th season as opposed to 2 points per visitor in the 2nd season). Therefore, making your future tile placement more difficult can cost you the game!

Money!

Income in the game seems to be well balanced. All income, after the 1st season, is based on the number of tiles you have in your zoo (1 for every tile). If a single player does well in a season and picks up 2 or 3 tiles, they usually end up paying more for those tiles in the auctions than they will end up receiving in income from them the following season. The other players, in contrast, end up conserving their tokens since only the winner of the auction pays their tokens to the bank. This has resulted in a cycle of auction tokens that repeats several times over the course of the game. Each player will have the opportunity to have a larger number of tokens than their opponents at several points in the game and therefore a better chance of getting the good tiles in a given auction. One of the keys to doing well in this game might be timing these times of plenty so they occur near the end of a season, if you are lucky enough to get the right tiles. It might seem like a great idea to jump on that nice tile at the start of a season but you need to keep in mind that scoring only occurs at the end of the season and a lot of visitor movement can take place over the course of a season!

Animals, Trees and Loops, Oh My!

The tile placement aspect of this game can be a real brain burner at times. Keeping your types of animals grouped together sounds easier than it is. This is definitely not Carcassonne! While finding a place to connect a tile might not be too hard, finding a good place that won't screw up your future plans takes some real planning. In one of my games I ended up boxing myself in, leaving little room for expansion and hindering my ability to expand on several animal type groups, all the while blindly trying to complete a single loop. This resulted in me losing badly as there was no way for me to take visitors from my opponent in the final two seasons of play. Then there are the loops. These are important but are certainly not the only way to go. If you concentrate on getting loops and occasionally pick up a minor position in an animal group or two, you will probably end up losing.

Getting Visitors is Hard, Keeping Them is Harder!

Getting visitors to your zoo is not the way to win. Keeping them in your zoo and having them there at the end of a season, when scoring occurs, is the key. You need to keep this in mind as you examine the tiles up for auction at the start of a season. If you manage to snag a good tile on the first auction than brings in several visitors to your zoo but then subsequent tile placement by your opponents steals those visitors away, then maybe that tile isn't such a good idea - especially if it will cost you a lot of tokens to get! It might be a better idea to let someone else pay through the nose for that first good tile, thereby weakening their future bidding potential and then go for a minor position in an animal type or perhaps a loop - something that might give you a net gain at the end of the season.

Counting Visitors

I have seen several comments about it being hard to quickly determine who has the majority and minority holdings for each of the animal types. Different colored visitors have been mentioned as a solution but I am unsure this would be any better. We did come up with a few guidelines that seemed to help the evaluation process move along quickly. We decided that if you had a majority in an animal type then the 2 visitors were always placed right next to each other so it was very easy to tell where the majorities were with a quick glance around the table. The visitors gained for the loops were laid flat and the visitors you gained for majority or minority of trees were placed on your starting tile directly in front of your entrance building. This seemed to work very nicely and it was quickly and easily apparent who had what once we became familiar with this system.

Number of Players

I have only played ZooSim with 2 players but I think that this would be even better with more players. I was initially skeptical of an auction game that allowed two players since much of the interaction between players is lost with this number. Other games that allow two player auctions are not as good with that number of players as they are with 3, 4 or more. Alan Moon's Capitol comes to mind as an example. While it is an excellent game, it is better with more than two players. I am sure ZooSim will also work out this way as well, although, I can say I like ZooSim better with two players than I like Capitol with that number.

One problem that might crop up with experienced players is analysis paralysis. Once you have played several games and more of the nuances of tile selection become apparent, there might be a tendency for some players to over-analyze the tiles in an effort to optimize their position at the end of the season.

Overall

ZooSim is a great game in my opinion. You can teach it to someone, gamer or nongamer, in 5 minutes, the components are great, the theme is strong and it is a game that can be played casually as a family game or more serious as a gamers game. There are lots of decisions to be made over the course of the game with plenty of opportunity for player interaction through the auctions and stealing visitors away from other players. The playing time is also fairly quick. Highly recommended.

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