Wild: Serengeti is live (Filming the Serengeti wildlife)
Update: Wild: Serengeti has launched on Kickstarter and the campaign will run for 27 days. You may pledge for a copy of the game.
Our preview post below was published on July 20.
Wild: Serengeti is a 1-4 players game of pattern building and set collection, in which you play as a film maker trying to take the best shots of the wildlife roaming the Serengeti plains. It will launch on Kickstarter on July 28.
The game is mostly played on a main board on which you will place animal meeples in different terrain spots. The goal is to place and move animals on the map grid to complete patterns called “scenes” that you will be drafting throughout the game. In solo, the goal is to achieve a score higher than the target score set by your chosen level of difficulty.
The game is played over 6 rounds. In each round, you first receive a coin supply. On your turn, you can take actions by spending these coins. The only constraint is that you cannot repeat the same action twice in a row. You can take the following actions: pick an animal meeple from one of four animal categories (predators, scavengers, large and migratory herbivores) and place it in a free spot on the map; move an animal up to 3 spaces on the grid; swap the position of two animals, or draft a scene card from the six on display to score it later. You may also reset the scene cards on display and pick a newly revealed one. As free actions, you can use Food tokens (to move one animal one space), SFX tokens (to ignore a “Terrain” condition on a scene card and complete it), or complete a scene card and score it.
There are three types of scene cards: terrain, straight line, and adjacency. The terrain scenes require specific animals to be located on the right terrain. The straight line scenes require animals to be placed in a straight line, and the adjacency scenes require that a specific animal is surrounded by two other animals. Some animals may also have a terrain condition, that is, they must be found on the right terrain type (which can be ignored with an SFX token). Completing a scene card typically gives you a reward, such as Food tokens, SFX tokens, or victory points. Furthermore, each card shows one or more icons of a given type. That way, you collect sets of icons: some scene cards score according to the number of such icons you have already collected. For instance, a card can earn you as many victory points as you have plant icons of a given type among the scene cards you have collected.
Some rounds begin with a special event: ceremony awards and migrations. There are two ceremony awards in the game, and, at the beginning of your session, you must set up an animal reward for each. When the ceremony occurs, you will score points for each animal icon of that type you have collected among your scene cards. During migrations, you must draw a migration card that will highlight some specific spots on the grid map: all animal meeples from these spots are removed and sent back to the supply.
At the end of the game, you will add to your score a bonus given by the “Like” icons you have collected on your scene cards. You also have the option of picking a unique specialist card at the beginning of the game (your character), which offers an additional way of scoring points.