Miller Zoo –  review after completing all 25 challenges—spoiler free (limited spoilers?)

Designer: Thomas Dagenais-Lespérance

Publisher:  Randolph

When I attended Origins this summer I walked away from the fair with just one purchase—Miller Zoo.  In the game you play the characters of Émilie and Clifford, the real founders of Miller Zoo in Quebec, Canada.  Along with other employees from the rehabilitation zoo, you are finding homes for and caring for actual zoo residents in the game.  While the demoer at Origins described the game as a family-friendly, cooperative, “legacy” game, the box itself merely invites you to “overcome challenges and watch the game evolve!”  In fact, there are 25 challenges hidden in 5 envelopes that you open as you work your way through the game.  My husband and I have now finished all 25 challenges, and it is my intention to give you a thorough review of our experience, while avoiding any spoilers.  I will compare it to other legacy games and other co-operative games, relying heavily on Pandemic as a reference point.

The game evolution

While there are 25 challenges that increase in complexity and difficulty, you never destroy any game components in Miller Zoo.  In fact, the postcards in the envelopes that detail the challenges provide a place for you to track the progress of three different game groups working through them.  At every point of the game I was able to reset to the first challenge and show the game to new players.  (There were stickers on the player cards, but I just replaced the cards with generic meeples when playing with new players.)  In fact, the first envelope had two sets of stickers, so if you decided early on that the game wasn’t for you, it would be easy to remove any stickers already used, throw them away, and pass the game along to a new owner with everything they needed to start from scratch.  There weren’t duplicate stickers in the later envelopes, but in my opinion, they had already gone above and beyond to make sure the game had replay value—even after you finish all 25 challenges.

Co-operative game play

There is no turn order in Miller Zoo—all players can perform actions simultaneously or in any order.  Like many cooperative games, this could lead to a sort of solitary game play with some players just doing what they are told.  If you dislike cooperative games, I’m not here to convince you that this one is any different.  Because Eric and I played through all 25 challenges together, we had equivalent game knowledge and managed to work together.  I tried to be careful to let others figure the game out for themselves when playing with others.

Family friendly

This.  This is where the game shines (or is ruined, based on your preferences).  Imagine you want to teach your non-gaming family Pandemic.  You play the first game with no special character abilities, you only have to cure one disease, and there are no epidemics.  The first game is so easy that you secretly wonder if there is really a game there—but your non-gaming friends and family enjoy themselves because, while there is clearly a puzzle to be solved, it is done easily, with very simple rules and game play.  Oh, and imagine that you recreated all the artwork so that it was an adorable zoo theme instead of a pandemic theme.  To be clear, Miller Zoo is not a Pandemic knock off—the game mechanisms and puzzles to be solved are completely different.  But I think imagining that “baby” version of Pandemic that you could teach to non-gamers gives you an accurate sense of just how EASY the first game of Miller Zoo really is.  I played it with a half-dozen different groups and we never came close to losing.  In fact, one group won before the end of the 2nd turn.

Does it get harder?  (Trying to remain spoiler free, here, while still answering what I think is the most important question if you are a traditional gamer.)  Yes.  But VERY SLOWLY.  We only lost 3 times in our quest to complete all 25 challenges. But that said, those challenges taught us how to manipulate the complexity and difficulty of the game with just about infinite possibilities.  I could absolutely create a scenario now that would be nearly impossible to win.  Or just hard to win.  Or kind of easy but with a bit of nail-biting.  Would I want to still play it after so many games?  Yes—but I’m the same person that wrote a review on Trambahn after 100 plays (for the record we are up to game 634). Eric enjoys playing a game often after he learns it and would rather not play something new every time we sit down to game.

Verdict

I would recommend Miller Zoo without reservation if you like cooperative games and have been looking for a family-friendly option.  If you have non-gamers or young kids that you play with often, the “evolutionary” aspect of the game would keep them engaged and allow you to progress to a level of difficulty that you might not achieve otherwise.  You could then take that info and play it with your game group at the highest level of difficulty and they would likely enjoy it a time or two.

Less opinion and more “how to play” information

As mentioned, the game is a unique puzzle, quite different from Pandemic.  Every morning players get a hand of resource cards and, from another deck, the needs of the current zoo residents are revealed.  You win the game by recruiting a stack of new animals to the zoo, set out at the beginning of the game.  To do that, you must travel around the zoo, and the cards in your hand can be used to move.  They are also resources which can be used to recruit new animals or meet the needs of the existing residents.  At the end of each day, ALL resident needs must be met.  If you weren’t able to get that done, you flip over resource kinds until you find everything you need.  If the resource deck runs out before you recruit the stack of new animals, you lose.  Players must decide whether to work every day to solve all the resident’s needs or focus on the new recruits and take some risks that the deck might run out too soon.  And with each recruit, you now have more residents with daily needs.  Some of the challenges have side goals to also accomplish before the game end.

I do love a good puzzle and the game can easily be played solo.  By scaling the difficulty to suit the needs of your game group, this could be just the family-friendly, cooperative, legacy-like game that you’ve been looking for!

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it! Valerie Matthews, Steph Hodge, Michael Aldridge
• I like it.  John P (2 plays)
• Neutral.
• Not for me…