Miller Zoo Review

boardgamequest.com:

We review Miller Zoo, a cooperative board game published by Randolph Publishing. In Miller Zoo, players are working together to solve the needs of all the animals in the zoo.

In recent years, animal-loving board game fans have had the good fortune of many new, good games featuring our beloved wildlife. There are the big names, of course, like Ark Nova, but there have been a lot of lesser-known options that are worth a look as well for the animal lover, such as Wild: Serengeti and Zoo King (try them if you haven’t! The latter has the bonus of being light on the pocketbook).

I have always had an affinity for zoos, and am supportive of their educational and conservation values in their modernized forms, so I always like giving zoo-themed (or similar) games a look. Miller Zoo was one that caught my eye in a list of potential games to review. It is a cooperative game for 1-6 players which plays relatively quickly in 30 minutes.

While Miller Zoo does have the zoo-building element featured in a lot of zoo-themed games, it goes a bit more “under the hood” so to speak, with your primary challenges as a team being dealing with the ongoing needs of the animals. This causes you to do a bit of juggling, as intaking new animals (that’s the zoo-building element) is your primary objective, but is a bit in conflict with the ongoing maintenance of the animals already under your care. How does this work? You just take it one day at a time. Literally!

Each round of this cooperative game is divided into four phases: Dawn, Morning, Afternoon, and Night. The Dawn and Morning consist of preparing for the day and identifying the animals’ needs. At Dawn, every player draws resource cards that they will have access to for the round, while in the