BEFORE WE BEGIN: No, that's not the worst pun title I could think of, but it did beat out:
- Here's Looking At ZOO Kid
- One For The Money, ZOO For The Show
and:
- 10 Things I Hate About ZOO..loretto



When I was a little fella there were two things I wanted to be when I grew up the first was a zookeeper and second was to be a sarcastic guy who got to post sarcastic things on the internet all the while carrying around with him an air of mystery and/or sarcasm.

With Zooloretto I get to live out one of those dreams, and with writing about Zooloretto on the internet I get to live out the second.

Third thing I wanted to be when I was a kid was Man Who Could Fly. Zooloretto unfortunately lets everybody down on that front as it includes ZERO flying possibilities.



'Players', or 'zookeepers' as I insist on calling everybody around the table when we play, must build their 'zoo' or 'zoobuilding' as I also insist on calling it, to the best it can be by filling it with different types of animals or 'zoo-mobiles' as I call them because I'm just so darn wacky like that.

Each player starts with their own 'zoo-topia' (that's 'zoo' to all you non madcore people who aren't down with zoo lingo.) The idea being to fill your zoo with a variety of animals in order to score the max amount of points available.



A set of trucks that look nothing like trucks and would be more accurately described as 'lumps of wood' are placed in the middle of the table. Each "truck" has three spaces. On a player’s turn they may pick up an animal piece from the pile and place it on one of the trucks.

When they find a truck enticing enough they may take that truck and its contents of animals, stalls and whathaveyous and place the items in their own zoo, thus ending their turn.



This ‘place animal on a truck or pick a truck’ hullabaloo continues until all players have a truck. Then another round starts. On each turn instead of placing an animal or hijacking a truck players may instead carry out a 'money action' which despite the promise of 'action' in the description is just the process of expanding ones zoo or selling/buying animals from another zoo. Sure, technically it's an action, but when I think of action I think of the Van Damme, and then the Van Damme kicking something, in the face. Now, if Zooloretto had face kicking Van Damme action, well, let's just say there wouldn't be a review here at all, just a big bag of awesome.



After the last set of tiles is distributed to trucks, and then taken from trucks to zoos, the scoring round begins. Player score points depending on the number of animals they have in each pen. More animals in pens, more points; obviously, it's not one of those bizarro YOU SHOULD ONLY COLLECT ONE MONKEY AND THAT IS THE ONLY VICTORY CONDITION GAME. Those games sucks, yes I'm talking about you 'The Collect A Lone Monkey Game'.


< Ahhh, the lone monkey victory condition has been met. Let us all rejoice in my win.

You lose points based on how many extra species of animals you have lying around in your barn. You get bonuses for stalls you have connected to barns. Because as we all know nothing makes a good zoo like a well placed STALL.



The person with the highest points wins. The one with the lowest points suffers with the knowledge that they are the worst person in the world at building a zoo. A person so bad that if given a real animal to care for they would probably kill it just by looking at it, because they are THAT BAD at animal care.

Zooloretto plays differently depending on how many folks you have around the table for example if you play with 2 people the game is awful.

It consists of you and your gaming partner taking turns to place animals on a selection of three trucks before you take the truck that you want, and the other player takes the truck that they want. Everybody is happy. Everybody gets what they want on every turn. You build up your zoo, you fall asleep, you dream of a game with less boredom, maybe a three, or a four player game, you wake up, everybody wins.


< Note: Playing with more than 2 players, therefore not having a lousy time.


A four player game, on the other hand, works great, you're fighting for the truck you want, gamble whether to keep adding animals to the truck or snatch it up before somebody else can get their greedy mitts on it. There's some tension and scoring is usually always close.



Zooloretto is a game that sounds like some kind of Spanish dance involving lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my. "My dear, would you like to... Zooloretto with me?" "Let us dance the... ZOOLORETTO."

... Moving on ...

Zooloretto is a game. A game about zoos. If you like zoos, you will like this game. Unless you are terrified of flat animals. In which case you will hate this game.


< OH NO! THE BABY PANDA HAS BEEN FLATTENED INTO A TINY LITTLE CIRCLE!

IN CONCLUSION: Zooloretto? More like Zoolo-good-game-that-people-will-enjoy-O...

I'm sure that could have been more punchy, but we'll never know now will we?