Ark Nova is an excellent board game, but it won’t be displacing Wingspan anytime soon

polygon.com:

Ark Nova is the most hyped new tabletop game since Wingspan burst onto the scene in the early months of 2019, an entire epoch ago, upending industry beliefs on what sort of games could cross over into the mainstream and find commercial success. Three years on, Wingspan — a non-violent game about wild bird populations — has sold over a million copies, and you can find it in your local Target. That’s even with a $50 price point and a steeper learning curve than games typically sold through big-box retailers.

Ark Nova ups that ante even further, coming in at $75, a listed playing time of 90-150 minutes, and an even higher level of complexity than Wingspan. Yet I don’t think it’s going to see the same kind of mainstream success as Wingspan, not because of cost, but because the barrier to entry for new players is simply too high.

Ark Nova is “heavier” than Terraforming Mars, with a weight of rules complexity that is comparable to Gloomhaven, probably the two most commercially successful complex games in the hobby’s modern history. Ark Nova has earned widespread acclaim since its debut at the Essen Game Fair in October, with much of the discussion online revolving around how fast the game has sold out in stores. I’ve played Ark Nova, and it is as good as the hype would have you believe, with plenty of strategy and long-term planning and brief turns to keep it moving. But it’s not one I’ll be breaking out with new or inexperienced board gamers.

The first game from designer Mathias Wigge, Ark Nova has players building out their own zoos on their personal player boards. It combines a litany of ideas from other complex games in a sort of “greatest hits” mashup of mechanics, producing a satisfying intellectual challenge with very