Description

This game is a distant relative of "Survive!" which introduces a number of interesting twists.

You are Noah's helpers and are competing to bring the best variety of animals on board before the waters rise too much. The board and bits are very nice plastic, except for the animals which are cardboard (and whose bases tend to fray after a while). There is a big Ark sitting in the middle of the board that acts as a four-slotted piggy bank. A whole bunch of four-squares bases shaped like lightning bolts come in three colours and represent the cool (white), temperate (green) and hot (yellow) continents. Each of these bases can hold an animal. The bases and animals are deployed semi-randomly at the game outset by all players (this could need to be better constrained by the rules as the set-up has considerable consequences on the game's outcome); the restriction is that each continent must form a single land mass. Although the bases come in three heights, this is ignored in the rules.

The animals are colour-coded at their bases to indicate on which continent they belong. They all come in pairs. Some animals are predators, with a red background. You must deploy them so as to split the pairs. Your little boat has room for two animals on board. You cannot carry a predator and a prey at once, but all other combinations are OK.

You roll a six-sided die to move; on a one, a continent base sinks (is removed) instead; you do not move. The flooded base cannot have an animal on it, so if there are no floodable bases, you reroll. Otherwise, you must use the exact die roll to move with --diagonals aren't allowed. Once beside a continent, the die roll is used to send an "expedition" to catch an animal, which again must be reached by exact count. If the trail goes through another animal as well, you have the option of capturing it too. You go back to your two "berth" spaces beside the Ark to drop the animals off --this also gets you a free second move.

Once the last animal is removed from the land, the game ends instantly. All animals in transit (on board players' boats) are discarded and those in the Ark are scored. Prey are worth one, predators two. A pair of animals doubles in worth. If you have animals from each of the three continents, your score doubles.

As the Ark hides the animals dropped in its compartments, there is an element of memory involved --you should try to remember what each player has brought back so far to have an idea of who's in the lead.

The movement system is annoying because diagonals aren't allowed (so parity conservation is enforced) and actually makes the game drag a bit at the end; it'd suggest playing that exact rolls aren't required --or that diagonals are allowed.