New York Zoo
Puzzling and animal breeding: Designer Uwe Rosenberg is at his best! In New York Zoo, you are constructing an animal park. Build animal enclosures, introduce new animals and raise their offspring. The game play is straightforward as you have only two turn options: puzzle a new enclosure tile into your zoo area or gain new animals to populate your animal encounters. But be sure to time your actions well since you want your zoo to participate in as many animal breedings as possible.
Number of players: 1 - 5
Game duration: 40 mn
Complexity: 2 / 5
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Play New York Zoo and 959 other games online.
No download necessary - play directly from your web browser.
With your friends and thousands of players from the whole world.
Free.
Rules summary
Overview
Be the first player to fully construct your Zoo.
Pieces
Pieces can be rotated or flipped (mirrored) when you place them.
Pieces do NOT have to be played adjacent to each other.
Pieces cannot overlap or overhang the board.
Use the question mark piece to test placement before committing, if desired.
Turn
The player turn has 3 phases:
- Moving the Elephant
- Main Action
- Animal Breeding
Phase 1. Moving the Elephant
- Move the elephant at least 1 space clockwise around the zoo, for the maximum spaces based on your player count (3/4).
- Tan animal breeding lines and empty tile spaces are NOT spaces and must be jumped over.
- Blue Acquisition spaces and Occupied Tile spaces DO count as movement spaces for the Elephant.
Phase 2. Main Action
- Depending on where you choose to move the Elephant, ignoring any spaces it travels through, two things might happen:
- Take the tile from the tile space or the animal from the animal space.
- Afterward, if you now have an enclosure that is completely full of animals, you exchange all the animals for an attraction.
Phase 3. Animal Breeding
- If the elephant passed over one of the tan animal breeding lines during phase 1, trigger the Animal Breeding phase for ALL players just before your turn ends.
- If breeding completely fills an enclosure, that player may exchange the animals for an attraction.
Animal Specifics
- Animals can only be placed in enclosures with animals of the same type.
- Depending on player count, your board will have 2-4 houses in your barn which can store 1 animal each. Each house can hold the same or different animals.
- Each time you add to an enclosure, a maximum of 2 animals can be added.
- If you add only 1 animal to an enclosure, you can take a second from one of your houses as long as they are the same animal.
Enclosure Specifics
- When taking a new tile, you MUST immediately add 1 or 2 animals to occupy it.
- The animal(s) you occupy it with can come from your Barns or previously placed enclosures.
- If taking from another enclosure, it must have at least 2 animals in it, as you cannot fully vacate an enclosure.
- As above, they must both be the same animal if placing 2.
- If you cannot comply with ALL of the above rules, you cannot take a tile and must move the elephant to a blue Acquisition space instead.
Acquisition Specifics
- Acquisition spaces depict 2 animals you may gain.
- Alternatively, you always have the option of gaining just 1 animal of the type of your choice.
- The new animal(s) can either be placed in a vacant house, an enclosure already containing the same animal type, or a vacant enclosure (which was previously completed).
- If you cannot place an animal, you cannot have the animal. However, if you can place 1 but not the other, or can place 1 or the other but not both, you get that one animal.
Attraction Specifics
- Immediately after an enclosure is completely filled with animals, it is emptied and the player gains an attraction of their choice.
- After emptying the animals from the full enclosure, If you have a vacant house, you may move 1 of them back into it.
- Important note: if you gain 2 animals, make sure to place 1 first, check for Attraction trigger, then place the other.
Breeding Specifics
- This is triggered by passing the tan animal breeding lines with the elephant. However, the player must complete their main action first before animal breeding occurs.
- Breeding happens for ALL players, not just the player who triggered it.
- Breeding occurs for the depicted animal only.
- If a player has at least 2 of that animal in an enclosure, they gain 1 more of that animal to the same enclosure.
- If a player has 2 enclosures where this applies, both enclosures gain 1 more animal.
- If a player has 3+ enclosures where this applies, they can only choose to trigger breeding in 2 of them.
- After which, there is an attraction check (note that an attraction check doesn't happen after each placement, but after all breeding is finished).
- A player does not have to take the full breeding they are entitled to if they do not wish to.
Bonus Breeding
In a 2 or 3 player game only, each player is entitled to a bonus breeding whenever breeding is triggered, if and only if they had at least one normal breeding. Bonus breeding allows you to choose an additional enclosure to breed (it must contain an animal type that is DIFFERENT than the type triggered by the breeding phase). This enclosure for Bonus Breeding must still be eligible to breed, i.e., must contain at least 2 animals.
Game End
The game ends when a player completely fills their board with tiles
If this happens during the Main Action phase, the player who achieved this immediately wins!
If this happens during the Animal Breeding phase, it is possible for multiple players to fill their zoo at the same time. If so, the player among them who has the most animals wins!
