Pre-orders close in September, and it's being talked about as a light game by the author of SETI. I've read the rules, and it is light in its rules, much less so in the trio of animals you get, because the box picks them for you. Here's what it really does, how much I bet on it, and where the math doesn't add up.
FrogScore
8.0
calculated on five items · how much we bet on it before playing
| Signature | 9 | |
| SETI wins the Deutscher Spiele Preis 2025, but Holek has only been publishing since 2024. | ||
| Originality | 7 | |
| Discarding moves all animals on a terrain, not just one as in Karuba. | ||
| Craftsmanship | 8 | |
| One hundred seventeen shaped tiles and double-sided printed figures; the insert does not contain all of them. | ||
| Care | 8 | |
| Numbered setup and played examples, but no advice for the first game. | ||
| Autonomy | 8 | |
| The text is on three tiles displayed to everyone; a summary sheet is missing. | ||
| Buy it if |
| You enjoy a calm puzzle where each piece follows its own rule and no one can ruin your work. |
| Leave it if |
| You seek conflict at the table, or you want to decide how difficult the game is before starting. |
| Window |
| Pre-order at 44.99 euros with estimated delivery in September 2026. No Italian edition announced by Albi or Capstone. |
→ Night at the Zoo on Frogames · Capstone Games English edition
The Profile · how it's made, not how much it's worth
| Interaction | ●○○○○ |
| No one touches your board. The only contact is the tile you take from the market before others. | |
| Chance | ●●●○○ |
| Animals and initial deployment are drawn. Market tiles, however, you see before choosing them. | |
| Weight | ●●○○○ |
| Three phases per round and four action symbols, plus the movement rule for the three species on the board. | |
| Downtime | ●●○○○ |
| Players draw in turn but place together, so the wait is only for the neighbor's choice. | |
| Footprint | ●●●○○ |
| One board per player plus the central board. The table fills up at setup and doesn't grow from there. | |
Mechanics · tile drafting · tile placement · pattern movement · set collection · official solo mode
| Players 1 to 4 | Duration 30 minutes declared |
| Structure 3 rounds of 5 draws | Language English, text on six tiles |
| In the box 117 tiles, 72 figures | Solo Yes, against Leo the Guardian |
Nine animals on the edges and a road that isn't there
It's nighttime, some animals have escaped from the zoo and need to get back in before the zookeepers notice. Each player has the same board in front of them. In the center is the Zoo, which is the arrival square, and around it opens a five-by-five grid of empty squares called the Neighborhood. On the four sides are nine spots with pre-printed terrain, three on one side and two on each of the other three. However, you don't choose the animals; instead, three random tiles are drawn from the six in the box, and those three species apply to everyone. You take three figures of each, one for each spot, and arrange them according to the deployment tile you received.
From there, the game is a single action, repeated fifteen times. In the center of the table is the market, a row of terrain tiles—grass, rock, sand—equal in number to the players plus one. In turn, you take one and place it in your Neighborhood, where it becomes both floor and action, because covering the right square with the right terrain triggers the symbol printed underneath. That symbol reveals an animal, collects points, grants an extra tile, or moves. Animals only walk on already placed tiles, one square at a time, so you build the path to the Zoo as you go. The player with the most points wins, and almost all points come from returning animals: five for a penguin, ten for a snake, fifteen for a sloth.
What isn't there weighs as much as what is. No one attacks you, no one places anything on your grid, there are no cards, no secret objectives. The only thing that silently accumulates are the seven types of food printed on the tiles, which ultimately pay out based on how many different types you have. For the rest, the returned animals are counted, and after the fifteenth draw, the game ends.
The six species · how each moves, and how much it costs to bring it home
Each animal tile has a row of moons printed on it, indicating how challenging it is to bring that species home: just one on the penguin, which is the simplest, up to four for the sloth. Three are used in each game.
| Penguin · 1 moonSlides in a straight line to the last tile it finds. Worth 5 points once returned. |
| Cheetah · 2 moonsWhen you move it by discarding a tile, it takes one more step than the others. Worth 6 points. |
| Wolf · 2 moonsCounts as a group, and is worth 7 points if one returns, 16 for two, 27 for all three. |
| Snake · 2 moonsContinues straight in the direction it's facing, and turning costs one movement. Worth 10 points. |
| Butterfly · 3 moonsCollects one pollen whenever you move it by discarding a tile, up to four. Worth 5 to 11 points. |
| Sloth · 4 moonsTakes one step and falls asleep, and the next movement is only to wake it up. Worth 15 points. |
How a turn works
The three phases are always repeated in this order, five times per round, three rounds in total.
| In turn · Draw Starting with the first player clockwise, everyone takes a tile from the market, and the remaining tile goes into the discard area, the row below the market. |
| In turn · Placement You place the tile in the Neighborhood and activate the symbol, or you keep it aside in your personal supply, where two can be stored, or you discard it without placing it to move all your animals currently on that terrain type. |
| All together · Maintenance Tiles are drawn from the pile to replenish the market, and the first player token passes to the player on the left, who will choose first in the next turn. |
| All together · End of round, at the 5th, 10th, and 15th draw Check which terrain appears most often among the discards, and all revealed animals on that terrain take one step, each according to its rule. |
Where points come from: each animal returned to the Zoo is worth what its tile says, from five to fifteen; each revealed animal remaining outside is worth one; different types of food collected are worth from six to thirty.
Fifteen tiles for twenty-five squares
The numbers don't add up, and that's intentional. The Neighborhood has twenty-five squares and you draw fifteen tiles, so even if you place them all, ten squares remain uncovered, and no animal can pass over an uncovered square. The missing tiles only arrive by activating the symbols of those already placed, so each placement also determines how much path you will have later.
But in the meantime, each tile is asking three different things of you. It's a floor, because without it the animal has nowhere to step. It's an action, because the symbol triggers the moment you place it and never again. And it's a starting signal, because by discarding it, you move all your animals on that terrain type in one go. You can only use it for one thing, and you give the other two away to the player you haven't been.
The core
Let's go back to that choice, because that's where games are decided. If you place the tile, you move one animal one square. If instead you discard it without placing it, all your animals currently on the terrain you discarded move together, and the cheetah, which takes an extra step on this movement, gains two.
Discarding a tile is not a waste; it's the only way to move in a block. The cost will be seen later, because there are fifteen tiles in the entire game, and each discarded one is a piece of path that will never exist, and animals only walk where you have built. Every turn the question remains the same. Do you run with the path you have, or do you build the one you'll need in three turns? Those who run don't build.
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The dilemma First, the major advantage. The six species are not six colors; they are six ways of thinking, and the drawn trio changes the problem to be solved. Seventeen legal trios for nine deployment tiles make for one hundred fifty-three different openings, so there are no identical games. The point is how they are drawn. The six animal tiles are shuffled, three are drawn, and the sum of their difficulty moons must be at least six. Below that threshold, they are reshuffled; above, never. There are twenty possible trios, and the threshold discards three, always the same ones, those where the penguin is with two two-moon animals. Of the seventeen remaining, sixteen contain either the sloth or the butterfly, meaning the two that force you to overturn your plan. The sloth sleeps after every step, and the butterfly only scores points if you move it by discarding tiles, so bringing it home early means bringing it home for few points. The trio applies to everyone, so it doesn't decide who wins, it decides how tough the evening is for the entire table. The rules ensure the game isn't too easy and never look the other way. There's no recommended trio for the first time and no upper limit, and for a game sold to families aged ten and up, this is a design choice that might not work. |
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If you're convinced so far, pre-orders are open and delivery is estimated for September. Pre-order for €44.99
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Who designed it, and who prints it
That line of the rulebook bears the signature of Tomáš Holek, who hadn't published anything until two years ago. Then, in 2024, SETI, Galileo Galilei, and Tea Garden were released almost in a row, and the first of the three won the Deutscher Spiele Preis 2025. At Lucca, he was among the five finalists for author of the year. It's a short and very steep career, and that's why the Signature here stops at nine. SETI has already proven its longevity; the other two haven't had time to try yet.
The illustrations tell the opposite story, because Tereza Kovandová is playing her very first game, as Albi announced when they published it. Albi has been publishing since 1991, sold over 450,000 copies of Karak, and on the second page of the rulebook, they print the address to request missing parts, which they send for free. However, the box we sell is the English version by Capstone, which brought Ark Nova, Terra Mystica, and Gaia Project to the United States.
“The rules are extremely simple, but the game is far from easy.”
Albi, official game announcement
Three numbers from the box
| 117 punchboard tiles | 72 die-cut figures | 15 draws in total |
Why it costs forty-five euros
The numbers above are almost the entire answer, because the one hundred seventeen tiles are not squares but irregular terrain shapes, die-cut one by one. The seventy-two figures are die-cut and printed on both sides, and this serves a specific purpose, because the sloth lies down to sleep and must still look like a sloth when lying down.
The last piece of cardboard keeps the bill below nine. Three different buyers have written on the BoardGameGeek forum that the tiles don't fit into the compartments. It doesn't ruin the games, but the box then won't close properly.
And if you play solo
The solo game is also in the same box and uses six dedicated tiles. The opponent is named Leo, and he is a warden who does not have a board and builds nothing. With each draw, a solo tile is revealed, Leo takes the tile from the market in the position indicated by that tile, and that piece is removed from the game, while the market remains at three, as in a two-player game.
You win against a score table, where below fifty points you are a Lost Lemur and above ninety, a Ghost of the Zoo. What's missing is an opponent, because Leo doesn't score points, doesn't have animals to bring home, and simply removes the tile you needed. The difficulty isn't adjustable either, because the only lever is the set of three tiles you draw, the same one that in a four-player game decides how tough the evening will be. Those looking for an automa that actually plays will not find it here.
| There is | There isn't |
| Official solo mode against Leo | Italian edition announced |
| Nine different starting setups | Latecomers expansion included |
| Official video tutorial, with QR | Symbol reference sheet |
| Missing pieces replaced by Albi | Tips for the first game |
Sources · official rulebook, BGG page, public responses from authors and publisher. Where the rulebook falls short, I have not filled in with my own words.
In September, the animals really arrive, inside a box that doesn't close properly.
But you won't know which ones until you shuffle the six tiles.
That's the only thing the game decides for you, and it's also why the second game doesn't resemble the first.
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FrogScore 8.0 We bet enough on it to have bought it before playing it. Pre-order Night at the Zoo
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→ Night at the Zoo · Latecomers Expansion · BoardGameGeek page
Night at the Zoo · Tomáš Holek · Tereza Kovandová · Anežka Bělohoubková · Albi · Capstone Games · tile-placement · family · Gauge · 2026 · Frogames
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