Zoo York
New York Zoo is the new 1-5 player polyomino game by Uwe Rosenberg, in which you are building and populating a zoo. Capstone Games opened the preorders on June 30 and will close the window on August 14. If you preorder from them, you can expect to receive the game in October. Retail release will be between late October and early November.
In New York Zoo, your player board will tell you which 2 animals you will start your zoo with, e.g. a meerkat and a flamingo. Your objective in the solo mode is to fill the board with tiles before the elephant token crosses the starting space on the action track for the second time.
On each turn, you first move the elephant token 0, 1, 2, 3 or 4 spaces along the track depending on the range marker of the round. At the end of the turn, the used marker is discarded. Then, if the elephant stopped in a green enclosure space, you take a tile to place on your board. If it stopped in a blue animal acquisition space, you take an animal. When an enclosure on your board is entirely filled with animals, you must exchange the animals for an Attraction (carousels etc.).
If the elephant token crosses an animal breeding line, your animal pairs of that species breed. You add 1 extra animal of that kind in the same enclosure. However, if you have 4 or 6 animals of the same kind in an enclosure, you won't receive 2 or 3 offspring: only two of them will breed. In the solo game, every time breeding happens, you also get one bonus breeding in one other enclosure. If you win, you can also calculate your score and try to beat it next time you play.