Animals on Board

About this board game

Animals on Board is an accessible and clever board game for 2–4 players, with games lasting around 30 minutes. Players gather animal tiles, manage food crates, and compete to fill their personal arks before scoring begins.

Each player starts by drawing three animal tiles, secretly choosing one, and placing it on a bracket of their two-tiered cardboard ark. The remaining animals form a central collective, including one animal that is always face-down. Every player also begins with one food crate and may hold no more than five.

On a turn, players choose between two important actions:

• Split the central animal collective into two groups and take a food crate.
• Take one animal collective into their ark by paying one food crate for each animal in that group.

After choosing a group, a player drops out of the current turn. The first player to drop out begins the next turn, making the order of decisions an important part of managing your animals and food supply.

The game ends when an ark contains at least ten animals. Then Noah claims all animal pairs, removing them before scoring. Single animals score the points printed on their tiles, ranging from 1 to 5, while herds automatically score five points each. Any remaining food crates are also worth one point apiece.

With its simple choices and meaningful timing, Animals on Board challenges players to judge when to divide the available animals, when to pay for a group, and how to build a high-scoring ark. It was released in 2016.