We have a lot of family stories about our trips to zoos, aquariums, and animal parks. It was at San Diego’s Wild Animal Park that we discovered that the way to keep a 5 year old motivated for a day of walking/viewing habitats was to buy a refillable cup and keep him hopped up on Sprite. (Yes, I know, we’re horrible parents. Let he who has not given his child something questionable cast the first stone.) It was at the Portland (Oregon) Zoo where my older son got a lesson in how bats used the restroom while hanging upside down. (I’ll spare you the details.) My wife just about threw herself into a wall to get away from an alligator swimming at eye level in the swamp exhibit at the Chattanooga Aquarium.

Sadly, we’ve also seen what can happen when animals are kept in less than stellar conditions. For years, the hippo at the Fresno Zoo had a tiny mostly concrete enclosure with a small swimming pool just deep enough for him to submerge himself. (Thankfully, that was changed more than a decade ago.)

I also have a number of board games about zoos and aquariums… which you can see from the picture here. Most of them involve creating habitats for your animals (well, with the exception of Affenraffen, which is about chasing down escaped animals). Interestingly, they all have some form of tile-laying as a key game mechanic… again, with the exception of Affenraffen, which is a real-time memory game.

As a public service, I’ll put some comments about these games at the end of this review – but the focus right now needs to shift to the thinky-est zoo games in my collection: Zoo Tycoon the Board Game and the expansion, Zoo Tycoon: New Shores.

Zoo Tycoon: The Board Game

Let me start with a simple admission: I have never played the Zoo Tycoon video game. I have played a ton of Rollercoaster Tycoon which did add zoo-like elements with one of the expansions. (Free non-board gaming content: Planet Coaster 2 is excellent and occupies way too much of my free time as I happily continue work on my massive theme park inside my computer.)

Some of you are likely stuck on something I said a couple of paragraphs back – I implied that Ark Nova is no longer the “thinky-est zoo game”. I stand by my statement. As wonderful as Ark Nova is (it was one of my top 100 games when I last listed them in 2024), it has a level of abstraction that simplifies certain decisions compared to Zoo Tycoon. Here’s an example: when I’m choosing to place an enclosure in Ark Nova, I has to be the correct size and I may need to make sure that it is adjacent to water or rock. In Zoo Tycoon, I need to have the right type of biome, the right size, the right number of shelters, the proper extra elements to increase the popularity, educational value, and conservation points of that animal… all of which factor into whether or not the animal is likely to have offspring the next year.

For some, that level of detail is off-putting. As a solo player, I find it fascinating as I try to keep my zoo running, growing, and not spiraling into debt.

The Flow of the Game

I’m not going to attempt a full & complete explanation of the rules in this review, but I will try to give you an overview of how the game runs. The game consists of seven “years” (turns) with four phases in each turn – spring, summer, autumn, and winter. The same set of actions and activities take place each season.

In general, players have three tracks they are moving forward on:

• Popularity (which has a direct link to income)
• Education (which affects both popularity and conservation)
• Conservation

At the end of the game, the lower score between Popularity & Conservation is the player’s final score.

Spring

After the starting player passes to the next player clockwise, an event card is revealed and players deal with the consequences – sometimes good, sometimes bad.

The major part of the Spring phase is dealing with offspring. Players roll for all species that can have offspring, potentially adding adorable animal babies (well, blue & pink discs) to their zoo. You can use a worker to assist in breeding or give a species contraception.

The most popular species that has offspring pushes your Buzz up the popularity track. (Buzz is temporary popularity which is added beyond your normal popularity.) The first time a species has offspring it increases your breeding program score – which can translate into conservation points at the end of the game.

Animal species come in three levels – the most unusual (level 3) animals can have their offspring put into a reintroduction program which also yields conservation points for those who participate.

Finally, each zoo is checked for their animal welfare and that score is recorded for later in the year.

Yes, I realize I’m throwing a lot of terms at you. Once you’ve read the whole flow, they should make more sense.

Summer

The Animal Exchange (pictured here) moves a single position to show the current availability and demand for animals. Red icons indicate a demand for animals – so players could send offspring or animals in quarantine (not yet in a zoo enclosure) to the board. Each move of animals counts as a trade – and zoos only have two trades during this turn. No surprise – if there isn’t a demand, you cannot off-load your animals unless you send a worker to generate Unexpected Demand (a once-per-game way to get around the problem.)

After each player has the opportunity to trade away animals, a snake draft occurs where zoo owners can bring animals into their zoo. Green icons indicate animals that are available – and animals with enough availability to be placed in your zoo have a green border around their icons. Of course, a player could also take animals that other zoos have off-loaded. It is not required to take all the animals available of a particular species.

Again, each player only has two trades – unless they send a worker to get them an extra trade. Workers can also be sent to create Unexpected Supply and receive animals that are not available on the exchange (another once-per-game power).

Animals can be placed directly in the zoo (if the enclosure for them already exists) or placed in quarantine. You only have two quarantine pens, so choose wisely!

At the end of summer, any leftover animals on the exchange are removed.

Any zoo can take Level 1 animals – but in order to take Level 2 or 3 animals, the animals currently in your zoo must be happy.

Short Digression: Animal Happiness

How can you tell if your animals are happy? That is tracked on their species card.

Animal happiness is when the various parameters (left to right) are fulfilled for that animal:

• Acclimation (how long have they been in your zoo?)
• Habitat size (is their enclosure big enough?)
• Number of shelters in their habitat (do they have places to rest/hide?)
• Number of animals (is this an appropriate colony of their species?)

If all of the parameters are in light green or better, the animals are happy. As you can see from the picture, the manatees just need more time to adjust… and the penguins need, well, more penguins.

Yes, there’s lots of other stuff on the card (down the left hand side of the card)

• what kind of popularity/education/conservation points the animal provides when given the right facilities
• whether or not they are associated with a particular national park
• the type of environment they need for their enclosure and how many of each animal an enclosure space can hold
• the running cost of an enclosure space with animals on it
• the social structure of the animals (not shown here, as neither manatees or penguins have the whole “only one alpha male” vibe going)
• the animals’ willingness to share their enclosure with co-species

Yes, I’m having to resist singing “Barbara Manatee“. So are some of you – you know who you are.

Autumn

In fall, each zoo receives three new enclosure tiles. (Enclosure tiles can be freely exchanged with the bank to get the correct type for whatever kind of enclosure you are building – the only limitation is that you have the proper number of enclosure tiles.) Two additional tiles are given out: one to the zoo who satisfies the current donor card and the other to the zoo who is leading on the Conservation track.

Players can also take loans by “selling” property in their zoo for $4. A prohibition tile is placed on a square when this occurs.

At this point, each player individually begins building enclosures, focal points, focal buildings, and commercial buildings. This is done simultaneously. (It’s probably best to do this individually when playing your first game – there are a lot of elements involved in creating an enclosure and it’s easy to forget one.)

Players put enclosure tiles in their zoo and then place the animals there, adjusting the running cost for each occupied tile. They also update the popularity track with the new species star rating… plus a Buzz bonus for your highest rated new species.

You can also add Co-Species (one per enclosure) for $2 additional running cost – but only if the main species tolerates sharing their enclosure. These tiles are placed in the enclosure and tiles occupied by the tiles cannot have animal meeples in them.

Focal points can be added for $2 each… but there can only be one focal point per tile:

• Retreats (shelters) – necessary for animal happiness
• Popularity – adds 1 point of popularity (evidently by making the animals easier for guests to observe)
  • Popularity focal points can only be added if unlocked by achieving the proper group size)
• Educational – adds the education points of all animals in the enclosure to the Education track – only one Educational building per enclosure
• Conservation – adds 1 point per Conservation building to a maximum of four.
  • The number of possible Conservation buildings is found on the animal card.

Focal buildings are tiles that can be purchased for $5 and are placed in your zoo:

• Parks – score 1 Popularity for each adjacent building
• Education booth – score 2 points for each adjacent enclosure matching the booth’s biome for animals that have an Education value.
• Conservation center – score 1 point for each adjacent enclosure with a species with a conservation value

Finally, commercial buildings can help reduce your running cost. You must have a Popularity score of 10+ and at least 2 occupied enclosures of the same biome. Food booths reduce the running cost by $3 each (with the second food booth of a biome type needing a 3rd matching enclosure) and the gift shop reduces the running cost by $5 and requiring both food booths and a 4th matching enclosure.

There are a plethora of worker actions available during Autumn. You can help a species acclimate or do construction activities (moving tiles, changing biomes of empty spaces, relocate a building).

When everyone is finished and/or satisfied with their choices, the turn progresses.

Winter

Winter is a clean-up phase… with some extra elements. The experience/acclimation cube for each animal is moved up a space. The leading player on the education track gets a conservation point, as does any other player in the same segment of the track.

Taxation occurs – any extra dollars you have over $3 are forfeit. (Which suggests that you should, you know, spend it before that point.) Then the zoos receive revenue based on the position of their Buzz marker on the Popularity track and with a bonus for first & second place on that track.

Well, that’s not quite right – they receive revenue MINUS their running cost. That means it’s possible to go into negative numbers. (This might be a good time to tell you that your first worker is free, but the other two workers increase your running cost for the turn.)

The Buzz markers are removed, workers are sent back to their office, and the year marker is moved forward.

At the end of seven years, the player with highest score (consisting of the lower of their Popularity and Conservation scores) wins the game. Note: you can’t win if you have a negative amount of money at the end of the game. There are some awards scored at the end of the game (having a complete set of animals from one of the national parks, having a successful breeding program, etc.)

One Is the Loneliest Number

I noted in the title that this was primarily a review focused on solo play – because, well, that’s the only way I’ve had the opportunity to play Zoo Tycoon. While I’m looking forward to getting a multi-player game of it to the table, it’s crunchy enough that it will take the right group of gamer-y friends to make that happen.

Solo play is “shoot for your best score” – with some helpful scoring thresholds to assess your performance. There are suggestions for easing the difficulty of the solo game which I’ve found to be necessary (for me) to achieve a “wining” score. The regular setting is pretty brutal.

The solo opponent is very easy to operate since much of the game is done on your own. Two other animal decks are used (one to generate national park acquisitions by the opponent, the other to simulate drafting animals from the exchange) and scoring thresholds are marked on the tracks. There’s more to it but not much – it gives you a solid framework to play the game and try to successfully build a zoo.

I’ve really had only one commanding victory (playing with the New Shores expansion) along with a couple of “hope your zoo can survive another couple of years” games and one that ended with me in the Zoo Tycoon version of debtor’s prison. Even with that record, I’ve really enjoyed playing the game… and I’m aware that my playing time has shrunk to 90 minutes from an initial 2 hours as I’ve gotten more comfortable with the game structure/rhythm.

New Shores – What Does the Expansion Add to Zoo Tycoon?

Besides a wealth of new animal species (made even larger by the additional animals add-on Treecer Games created), the New Shores expansion adds a new Animal Exchange board that allows for a mixture of species between the base game and expansion. (That includes updated exchange sheets, new national park tokens, and the like.) With those new animal types comes new biomes – including water.

The expansion also introduces some new mechanics as well – including the cost of water enclosures, the addition of reptile houses, animals that produce eggs as offspring, and – most importantly – the Vivarium. (For those of us here in the U.S., think “reptile house” – or, as my wife used to call it when we took the boys to the zoo, the “creepy-crawly place”.)

The Vivarium is an extra snake draft that occurs at the end of Autumn – and animals you place there can gain you popularity as you collect sets as well as other benefits. (New creepy-crawly animals are revealed at the end of Autumn, so you have time to plan for what you’ll pay for… or if you’ll simply ignore it for a year or two.)

The expansion rules are not particularly more complicated, though there are new elements that I’m still learning. I wish they’d put a tile in the box to cover the “order of play” section of the scoreboard with an expanded order of play – but the changes are relatively minor, so I may just be spoiled by other games.

Final Thoughts

There’s a lot of game in these two boxes – and a lot of game components. Not surprisingly, I have a lot of thoughts about Zoo Tycoon: The Board Game.

Positives

• The beautifully illustrated tuckboxes are fantastic for storage and finding the correct animal pieces.
• The animal pieces themselves are delightful. (I’m particularly fond of the otters.)
• The Animal Exchange is a clever way to vary up animal availability and demand… and the modular exchange (and cards) in the expansion are even better.
• The rulebook is complete – I haven’t had to hunt down a missing rule or clarification on the Geek. (I take that back – I did hunt for one thing… then realized that the card actually explained itself and I just wasn’t reading carefully.)
• The puzzle of the gameplay is intriguing. It’s one of those games I find myself thinking about even when I’ve finished putting it away – “What if…?” Which means I’m ready to get it out again!

Negatives

• The rulebook for the base game is eccentrically arranged. A number of detailed processes are outlined in separate sections multiple pages away from where they are introduced in the rulebook. (I understand why this is structured this way… but it’s not my preferred way to learn rules.)
  • The rulebook for the expansion is more straightforward, but it doesn’t have to do the heavy lifting of explaining the entire game.
  • The best resource I found for helping with the flow of the game from the Geek is from a user named Berir – highly recommended.

Warnings

• Zoo Tycoon is the kind of game that the pace will be pegged to the speed of the slowest player. In solo play, that’s not a big deal – but multi-player games could run long with someone who dithers.
• The game itself makes sense thematically, especially if you’ve played any kind of computer zoo/jurassic park-ish sim game. That said, there are a lot of things to keep track of that can put off players who want something with less simulation-like elements. (Some of the I mention below may be a better fit for those folks.)
• Every gamer has that one person in their life who walks into your game room, picks up a game that haven’t seen before, and flips the box over to learn more about the game. Do not let that person near your copy of Zoo Tycoon. :-)

When all is said and done (or, in this case, written and done), I’m really glad to have Zoo Tycoon in my collection. And I’d be happy to teach anyone who makes it to my neck of the woods.

Extra Credit: Zoo Games You Should Know

• Affenraffen – Michael Schacht-designed real-time memory game… those four words (“real-time memory game”) should give you all the information you need to decide if you want to play it or not.
• Ark Nova – As mentioned before, a personal favorite. It’s a great solo game as well as excellent with 2-3 players. (I don’t love it with 4.) The Marine Worlds expansion is excellent – and the two extra map packs add some nice variety.
• Barenpark – The biggest knock on Barenpark was that it did not come with a helpful storage system… but the folks at Folded Space did us all a solid and created one that fits both the base game and the expansion. My favorite way to play is with the Grizzly module for a slightly longer game.
• Droles des Zebres – My French pronunciation is atrocious – but the game is not. Clever two-player tile-placement game filled with brinksmanship.
• Habitats – This tile drafting/laying game has recently been reprinted with new art… but I’m partial to my original copy (albeit with the mini-expansions added).
• O Zoo le Mio – I forgot to grab it and put in the pile (it’s not in the picture at the beginning of this article) – whoops. This is a reskin of ZooSim… and it’s the second of two Corne van Moorsel designs in this list of zoo games. It’s a blind auction with tile-laying and plays pretty quickly. Note: the income system is pretty ruthless – you cannot afford to get behind the curve.
• Zooloretto & Aquaretto – Another top 100 game for me… well, games. Lots of people like Coloretto (the game that contains the key mechanic in these zoo games) better than Zooloretto – they’re wrong, of course, but I think that’s more a function of “liking a clever mechanic” versus “liking a clever mechanic in the midst of a thematic & enjoyable game”.

I received a review copy of the base game from the good folks at Treecer Games – but I bought the expansion and the additional animals pack with my own money.