New York Zoo

You fill a zoo board with enclosure tiles and stock them with meerkats, penguins, flamingos, kangaroos and foxes. This is a race, not a points contest: the first to cover their board wins. Your elephant marker walks one to four steps around a shared track. Land on an enclosure space and you take that tile and fit it into your zoo, filling it with a matching animal if you have one. Land on an animal space and you take those animals home. Whenever any marker passes a breeding spot, every matching pair in every zoo produces a baby, so timing your moves to breed with pairs ready is the engine. From the designer of Patchwork, this is the gentle end of his tile games and our pick for anyone who enjoyed Bärenpark and wants a shared track to fight over. Fine at two, best at three, forty minutes.