I started playing New York Zoo without realizing it was a game designed by Uwe Rosenberg. The clue should have been obvious since it uses polyomino pieces, but it took me half the game to figure it out. In this game, those polyomino shapes represent different animal enclosures for a zoo. Every player begins with an empty zoo area. Your main task is to collect enclosure tiles to place in your zoo and gather animals to put inside them. The animals in your zoo will reproduce over time. When you manage to fill an enclosure completely with animals, you earn a special bonus tile. The ultimate goal is to be the first player to completely fill your entire zoo with tiles.
The main game board is a long track located at the top of the play area. It forms a circular path with several different stops along the way. On your turn, you move the shared game piece, which is an elephant, along this path. You can move it up to four steps at a time. Depending on where you decide to stop, you will claim either an enclosure tile or two animal tokens. After acquiring these items, you place them directly onto your personal player board to build your zoo.
There are orange spots marked on the main board, but these are not places where you can stop your elephant. Instead, they serve as breeding points. You cannot pause on these spaces, but every time your elephant passes a breeding point, the specific animal type associated with that point will breed. If you have an enclosure containing at least two animals of that type, you will gain one new animal. This breeding mechanic is quite similar to what you might find in the popular game Agricola.
On your personal player board, you have three temporary storage cages available for holding animals. These cages allow you to keep animals safe before you are ready to place them into an enclosure. This gives you some flexibility in managing your zoo layout and animal collection as the game progresses.
Along the bottom section of the game area, there are special tiles that you can claim. You earn these bonus tiles whenever you successfully fill an enclosure with animals. Most of these special tiles are available in limited quantities, except for the tiny single square tiles which are more plentiful. Players will often compete fiercely to grab the larger special tiles because they help you fill your zoo much faster.
The game offers a very pleasant and enjoyable play experience. It is considered a light game, so I would categorize it as a family game suitable for various ages. While the rules are simple, there are several different tactics you can use to improve your chances of winning. You need to think strategically about your moves. The enclosures come in different sizes, which presents an interesting balance. Larger enclosures help you cover your board area more quickly, while smaller enclosures can be filled with animals faster, allowing you to claim bonus tiles sooner. You will need to watch carefully for opportunities to claim pairs of animals so you can take full advantage of every breeding chance. There are also ways to interfere with your opponents. You can grab resources that you think they need, or you can rush past breeding points before they have a chance to collect a pair of animals for breeding.
