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Base price: $12.42?.
2 – 6 players.
Play time: ~20 minutes.
BGG Link
Buy on Amazon (via What’s Eric Playing?)
Logged plays: 3
Full disclosure: A review copy of Mesozooic was provided by Z-Man Games.
OrcaCon this weekend! As usual, I’m around and kicking it, though I’m still pretty wiped out from the holidays. A problem for another time, I suppose. I’m still plugging away and writing, though I probably need to get a few more things written ahead of the coming months; I want to do a fair bit of travel. That’s not much for y’all; just an update for me. In the meantime, there’s still games to review, so let’s check out the next one: Mesozooic!
In Mesozooic, your goal is to build the best dinosaur zoo the world has ever seen! And they’re a lot more skeptical because of what happened to the last Jurassic something-or-other. Pretty sure a guy got eaten. Not great for PR. But you’ve got a foolproof strategy, probably. Over the course of three rounds, you’ll pass cards around your group, choosing one to keep for yourself. The challenge comes in when it’s time to build your zoo: you have to shuffle them and play them randomly, then move them around in real-time to get a useful zoo layout! Talk about the hazards of real estate. Will you be able to build the ultimate dinosaur theme park?
Overall: 7.75 / 10
Clik here to view.
Overall, there’s a lot to like about Mesozooic! For fans of dinosaurs, generally, there’s a great set of dinos and art here, so the theme will definitely appeal to those folks. It’s also got a bit of interesting strategy to it, both in terms of the drafting element where players pick their zoo cards and then pass the rest on and in terms of the real-time zoo organization element. It has a lot of the same elements that made me find Flash 8 so delightful; I think I just like those speed-rotation puzzles. It’s quick, entertaining, and has a nice progression to it, too: as you get experienced, there are more complex cards that you can shuffle in for a more dynamic game.
One thing that stood out to me as a point of critique is just that randomness may not always be your ally, but the game smartly accounts for it. So, over the three rounds, you might end up with a round where your random zoo start is pretty close to optimal; that’s just how it shakes out sometimes. By the same logic, you might have a round where your random starting configuration absolutely sucks. That could end up being a point of frustration, but the game lets you drop your lowest round score at the end, which helps both adjust for that and helps players who are just learning the ropes of the game. I like that a lot, actually. There’s not a ton you can do if you just get a completely garbage draft, but, that’s drafting games for you sometimes.
Otherwise, I think Mesozooic does a nice job of being a relatively low-key and approachable game for a wide variety of groups. Granted, if spatial awareness or real-time play aren’t your scene, you’re not going to enjoy the game. If you’re otherwise a fan of dinosaurs, real-time zoo construction, or rotation-heavy puzzle games, you’ll probably have a blast!
If you enjoyed this review and would like to support What’s Eric Playing? in the future, please check out my Patreon. Thanks for reading!