New Game: Animal Houses

I have a response and an update.

Well, there's no dog in the game, since I'm sticking with only the animals shown on the dice, but it might be interesting to have a couple of the houses with a dog hanging out on a particular floor - like, maybe a room already filled with an animal - and a skunk can't stay in that house.

As this is for relatively young kids, I didn't want to throw too much at them at once. I'm cool with sacrificing complexity in this first version.

Regarding an update: I made some slight changes to the game after today's playtest.

• The Raccoons & Opossums earn 10 bonus points to a player if they can draw a straight line up and down in a house with 3 matching animals (the score bonus requires 3 matching animals in a column).
• Similar to above, the Beavers & Rabbits score a player a 10 point bonus if 3 of that same animal are in a row.

I elected to add these in so that although there's still competition for the Skunks, and the Squirrels are an attempt to "split the difference" in Animal Token utility, this adds an interesting wrinkle and possible competition for some of the other Animal Tokens.

I considered a few ways to play this game without dice. There's more of a strategic element to at least one of the variations.

• Flip all the animal tiles face-down. For the next round draw at least 2 per player: somewhere from 4 to 8. Flip the chosen tiles face-up, and let players "snake draft" their animals for that round until each player has chosen two animals. Set any animal tiles not chosen off to the side. Don't add these non-selected tiles back into the animal supply until the original animal supply becomes exhausted.
• For a further strategic element, choose a distribution of animal tiles, and label the backs all the same letter/number/symbol. At the start of a round, select a matching set, and choose animals only from that set. Do this until all sets have been run through at least once, then return them to the animal tile pool face-down.

The advantage of the second method is that you can ensure that there's an even distribution of all available animal tiles. This could be useful for players who are attempting to determine their optimal strategy with the default probabilities of using the two dice.

The advantage of the first method is that there's still luck and tactical thinking involved. Players will have to choose tiles in a way that seems more similar to the dice-throwing method, since there's no guarantee that every type of animal will come out every single round. Of course, since there's a limited number of tiles, the distribution is still there anyway, and players may still want to hold out for a few more Skunks before they completely fill in their Animal Houses.

Personally, I like the tactical thinking required for the second method, but the first method also has its merits. Each variation lends a different, distinct flavour to the game as it plays out.

Well it's doubtful I would allow 8 tiles for a two-player game (I see that as more appropriate for a 3- or 4-player game). But yes, the tiles not chosen during a round are pushed off to the side until the rest of the drafting pile is exhausted.

That's definitely what I am going for. The dice version provided the same kind of distribution, with the added feature of no limit to the number of tiles showing any given animal.

I'll also skip ahead a bit in your response, because it seems your notes show that you do understand what I was trying to describe for option 2: you pick tiles only after they are face-up.

To clarify for other readers: imagine something like a deck of standard playing cards where - instead of dealing cards at random - you would deal only the Diamonds, or only the Clubs. Any of those cards not chosen are set off to the side until the rest of the suits have been picked through. Then they would be brought out on future rounds, one suit at a time, for players to pick from again until the game is over.

I do think some playtesting is required to determine what works best. I do completely agree with you that the second method (which I compared to suits) is more fiddly and that it affects replayability (in a negative way). It was a method to provide more control and predictability to the player.

Maybe that method would work best in a solo game, where optimal strategies would need to be sorted out based on the buildings players had to fill with occupants.

In a multi-player game, choosing would be influenced by:

• Building layout
• player order
• set order (Diamonds first, or Clubs first, etc.)

...So I'm just not certain.

Sure, I could see this working.

• Draw four pairs of face-down tiles. [EDIT: then, of course, reveal the tiles so players know what they're choosing.]
• Players choose one pair to add to their houses on each turn.
• Any tiles not chosen are discarded face-down, and then once the draw pile is exhausted the discards are mixed/shuffled to create the new draw pile, where new pairs are drawn - likely in new pair combinations.

In this scenario, the animals want to be neighbours, or perhaps housemates.

This definitely seems like a much-less-fiddly way to integrate decisions that are more interesting. I'd also likely want to provide players with both houses at the outset of the game instead of one at a time, to maximize player options - particularly when they choose a pair of incompatible animals.

Since this elegantly applies the decision-making layer into the game, maybe I can also experiment with the colour-related mechanics that questccg had mentioned earlier.

First however, I want to update the current ruleset with what's been discussed here. It seems a worthwhile direction it can go.

Thank you both for your feedback and suggestions, questccg and Fri! :)

I created new icons for the different animals.

For the tiles, I'll combine these with the three different options: stripes, spots, and windows. Animals can earn players additional points when they match these patterns between animals and their rooms.

https://www.bgdf.com/image/animal-houses-animal-icons-v2

I spent time earlier today cutting out the individual rooms. So at first I had a stack of 1.1" rooms of the three different types. Next I started assembling a few "room dominos," as well as reserving a handful of single room tiles.

One of the things I want to try next is allowing players to build their own Animal Houses instead of moving Animals into pre-made ones.I envision a 4x4 grid, where the player starts with four rooms and can place them however they like.

Also on the playtesting docket:

• Fri suggested a couple Animal Token drafting methods some time back. Serpentine draft works well (at least in the two-player version I tested previously) and I want to fiddle around with a couple more before I settle on something for the long-term.
• Simulate a three-player game. If my brain can handle it, I want to stress-test this on my own before I find fellow playtesters to have a go at this with me. I think it's entirely possible.
• Implement the Acorn Tokens. What will they do? Are they currency as well as bonus points? Maybe just one of those?
• Segregate Animal tiles into smaller sets. I'm thinking something like the four cardinal directions (N, S, E, W) each with their own distribution of Animals. This would provide some thematic links, options for drafting methods, and other things I'd like to try.
• Experiment with how to mark the end of a game. If I provide other options for players to do stuff - either Animals moving in to a House, or the player expanding one of their houses with an additional Room Tile, for example - it's quite likely players will not have the identical end-game state, unless I hard-code that into the ruleset. It's possible, but I want to experiment more and see what comes out of expanding player options.

This has clearly grown beyond its humble beginnings as a dice game for my relatives. I think it's an idea worth pursuing.