Animals on Board Review

A good barometer of whether or not a family game is any good is if your family wants to play it again right after the results of the first game. And then after the second, they still want more. Such was the case when I played Animals on Board, a new Spiel Des Jahres-nominated title brought to the US courtesy Stronghold Games. My kids (six and almost five) love this game- even though it has some sort of tricky scoring that I’m not quite sure they grasp. But that slightly more cereberal element is what makes it a great family game, not just a great kid’s game.

The concept is that players are building arks onto which they are trying to load groups of animals. There’s also another ark-builder named Noah that is, as the story goes, looking to round up pairs of animals. The goal is to have the most points worth of animals once someone fills their ark with ten animal tiles – and after any pairs of animals on your boat go off with that Noah dude.

Gameplay is simple. Between all players, there is an assortment of animal tiles initially grouped together. On your turn, you choose between splitting a group of animal tiles into two new groups and taking food crate or spending food crates to take a group of animal tiles onto your ark, which is represented by a four piece cardboard tile rack. When you acquire animals, It costs one food crate per tile and you can only buy one group per round. So choose wisely!

The animal tiles are numbered one to five, and the scoring is where some of the depth and more interesting decisions come into play. A single animal tile on your ark is worth face value. Two of a kind zeroes out since they go over to Noah’s boat. But a “herd” of three or more means that each animal is worth five points each.

Kids love collecting the animals, “feeding” them to entice them on board and filling up their boat with a menagerie. But the depth, such as it is, lies in the “I split, you choose” mechanic that drives the game. Choosing which splits to make is a critical part of the game because you leave them for the next players. You might break up a three-of-a-kind set by separating a singleton away, just to deny another player a 15 point acquisition. Or you might divide animals you need out of a larger group in hopes that someone else doesn’t snatch them up or subdivide them by the time your turn comes back around.

There’s a lot of neat, simple design in Animals on Board that makes it an ideal Spiel Des Jahres-class title. This means that among family-friendly games, it is in the top tier. The only knock against this charming, fun to play title is that I don’t care for the illustrations at all. My little girl loves them, especially how they “mature” as they move up through each value so I suppose daddy’s taste doesn’t count. This is a fine choice for any family with or without children, and it makes for a great casual game as well.