Board Game Review – Zooloretto: The Dice Game [EN]

Another older game. I have only played the bigger game on my PC and it felt a bit too big and too long. The dice version seems as a perfect fit to me. And this is most probably the most played game for me (partly because of it being available on Yucata). It’s a dice game, so you can’t really have a long term strategy (well you can, kind of). So it is a highly tactical game. You have to constantly accommodate to dice rolls, your opponent moves. And that’s what attracts me in this game the most. It’s a fairly simple game. You take turns to roll two dice and then select where to put them. There are 3 trucks with 3 spots on each one. You can put all dice on one or split them. Then you opponents choose which truck to take and put selected dice into they area. You collect different species of animals and get points for that. You also try to be the first to get all animals of every specie to get bonus points. But if you already have one category filled, you get foul points for getting too many animals of that kind. So it’s a balance seeking game. Should you only take a few animals at once and try to always have all categories with empty spots to not get foul points (but on the other hand, not getting the bonuses)? Or should you at some point rush to complete categories to get those precious bonus points and force the game end (it ends when one player has only one kind of animals not filled). You can also force opponents to take too many animals by making one truck too tempting, so they would be afraid to leave it for you. And there are coins also to mitigate foul points and to give a bit of additional points. The game is very quick, yet it has a sweet spot on being quick and providing enough tactical choices (sometimes even brainburny). Of course, there is a bit of luck involved with dice rolling, but i don’t mind it in this game that much. This is also only a two players game for me (it can be played with 4), because with more players it gets too chaotic and tactical choices diminish quickly. So i will rate it a tad lower because of this limitation, but it is still a great game. 8/10

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