A wildlife reserve in my pocket

💡 Animals

⚙️Tile placement; card selection ( card drafting )

Quiz question : what do the otter, polar bear, lion, flamingo, gorilla, crocodile, penguin and panda have in common?

Answer : they all fit in my pocket (or almost), with the box of Nimalia , a little tile placement game by William Liévain, nicely illustrated by Pauline Détraz.

I admit that when I took a look at the box, I had mixed feelings: could a game that takes up a bit of the theme of Randy Flynn's excellent Cascadia do better than the latter? Would I dare cheat on my Cascadia for this newcomer? What more does he have, what better does he have to offer me? Should I even open it? Would it already be cowardly infidelity to extract the cards from their thin plastic dress? To gently feel the wood of the pretty tally markers?

Nay! “You thought that’s what you have, but that’s not what you have,” I finally said to myself, brushing aside the pangs of this absolutely useless love dilemma: Cascadia can go back to sleeping peacefully on her tablet, coexistence with Nimalia is very possible! Even if the two games start from the same principle (you have to build a wildlife reserve for pretty little animals), I would say that Nimalia gives the impression of being the strange and charming child of Cascadia , Cartographers and Sushi. Go … and it also has the nice quality of being small, very small, to the point of entering your pocket (well, let's say a fairly large pocket, like the one on your winter coat).

How it works ?

In Nimalia , you have five rounds to build the ideal wildlife reserve from 2x2 square cards representing animals in different habitats.

Each player begins a round with three cards in hand; he chooses one which he places in his wildlife reserve, and passes the other two to his neighbor on the left or right, depending on the number of the round.

When we place a map in our wildlife reserve, two rules must be respected: a) the new map must be superimposed, in whole or in part, on another map in our grid; b) the total size of our wildlife reserve cannot exceed 6 x 6 squares (but it is not necessary to make a nice complete square).

Simple, right? But how do we know what is the ideal way to build our grid? Thanks to the four scorecards, which give you objectives to achieve to score points.

At the start of the game, we select (or draw at random) four score cards (one of each color) arranged around the round counter. At the end of each round, once all players have placed their three cards in their grid, the points are counted. Depending on the round number, two or three of the objective cards will score us points. For example, at the end of the first round, the blue objective and the green objective are activated; at the end of the second round, green and yellow, and so on.

After scoring the points in the fifth round, the game is over, and the player with the highest total wins!

That's the main points. And between these lines, there is a whole decision-making and strategic space to fill: which objective(s) should I prioritize? Should I bet on a big long-term hit, or should I try to accumulate fewer points more quickly? Is it profitable to cover this crocodile which will be worth two points in the next round in order to better place a card for the objective of the current round? In Nimalia , we must constantly find the best (or least worst!) thing to do with the cards handed to us by our neighbors. It's a fun exercise that can create as many moments of frustration as moments of grace (and what about the unhealthy joy of passing to our neighbor THE card that will spoil his beautiful reserve!)

 So… what do we think?

Nimalia may not be an impressively designed game, nor a game brimming with originality, but it is a fast, enjoyable and accessible game that can be played in two minutes and played in twenty at most when you already played it. It's the kind of game that you leave lying around on the corner of the kitchen counter, and that you can take out without embarrassment between the main course and dessert (let's call it a “playful Norman hole”).

Thematically, Nimalia offers an animal/environmental protection theme which is a little naive and catchy (it's the fashion: think of Cascadia, Earth, Ark Nova and so on...) but which, in the end, is not It is above all just a pretext for gambling; this limited integration of the theme sometimes creates somewhat comical ecological oddities, like penguins on their ice floes, surrounded by tropical jungles and savannahs with lions…) That said, if you can ignore these little thematic oddities, you will find there largely your account.

Nimalia is a small tactical puzzle that offers enough possibilities to please more seasoned players, but which will also please neophytes, or even grumpy people who always roll their eyes when asked: "are we playing to a game? " That's not bad !

In terms of hardware and graphics, the game is completely honest. Pauline Détraz's illustrations, without being memorable, are colorful and above all clearly visible, which is essential for this type of game where the placement of the cards is important. The portable format of the game nevertheless required a small sacrifice: as we place cards and not tiles (thicker) and as these cards are slightly curved, it can happen that our grid moves a little, especially when we have several cards superimposed on each other. This is a very negligible flaw, easily compensated for by the speed with which you can put the game away after a game.

WE love…

The speed of setup and play;

The simplicity of the game mechanics;

The tactical aspect of the puzzle

We like less…

Theme integration;

Slightly curved cards that don't always overlap well;

Nimalia

A game by William Liévain, illustrated by Pauline Détraz

The Game Box

20-30 minutes per game

10 years and over

-Mast

To get this game, click here: https://www.asdesjeux.com/products/nimalia-ml