ZooSim, or O Zoo le Mio, is a tile-laying and bidding game with a zoo developer theme.
Each player starts with money hidden from prying eyes.
There are five turns per game, and five rounds per turn.
At the beginning of each turn, five tiles are revealed in order. Each tile has paths and two animal exhibits and shrubbery. There are five different types of exhibits. Each exhibit has a value.
All players make a hidden bid for the first tile. The winner gets to add the tile to his zoo. This continues for each tile. In the case of ties, the loser of the previous tie wins the current tie.
At the end of each turn, each player adds his points and multiplies the result by the turn number. A player gets two points for the most impressive exhibit, for each exhibit type. The second most impressive exhibit gets one point. Note that orthogonally adjacent tiles with the same exhibit type get more impressive. If there is only one player with a particular exhibit type, he gets only one point for that exhibit type instead of two points. The player with the most shrubbery gets two points, and second most gets one point. If there is only one player with shrubbery, he gets only one point for having it. Any loops created by pathways score an additional point each. For ties, the player who extended an exhibit, or the number of shrubberies last, wins the tie. (Quite unlike the similar tie-breaker rules in Settlers of Catan.)
The player with the highest score at the end of the game, wins. In case of ties, the last person who lost a tie beats the current tie.
In case you're wondering, there's a clever mechanism for keeping track of tie breakers for bidding and end-of-game scoring. There's a flag pole, with a flag from each color on it. The highest flag breaks ties against lower flags, then get placed below all the flags.
The components are high-quality card board -- the kind we're getting used to from German-style games. The scoring tokens and money are wooden bits. The art-work is effective and engaging.
Click here to buy ZooSim at FunAgain.com.
Click here to learn more about ZooSim at BoardGameGeek.com.
