I uploaded the rules to my first game. ZOO-bilee

This looks like a cute enough little game. There's a *lot* of bidding, which may grow dull after a while, and I suspect you'll need to come up with something slightly more clever to get the animals out there. Furthermore, I think the starting prices for some of the animals may be way too high, but that will be something you'll find out quickly in playtesting.

One thing you might consider doing differently is, each round, setting out the available animals, and then bidding for turn order, then each player, in order, picks an animal and pays the printed price (or takes his turn per your existing recipe, or whatever). This will have some of the tension of bidding, but will reduce the number of bids required. "Do I pay for that Giraffe to deprive Jim, who I know wants it, even though I'd rather get the crocodile?"

This would also mitigate the effect whereby "I started a bid on my turn, but I didn't win, so now I don't get to do anything", which may be rather frustrating; maybe players could take 2 actions per turn?

I do like having to choose between opening the zoo, and thus having enough money to do things, versus building or acquiring animals, which provide scoring potential. That's very cute. Although, as I said above, being able to just buy an animal outright at the printed cost would seem to retain all of the interesting tension of the game, and would also make the game (a) faster and (b) less frustrating, so I would again strongly recommend simply bidding for turn order, or just jettisoning the bidding altogether; you don't really need it here!

You might also spice up your cards a bit by adding icons to indicate whether the animal is a bird, mammal, or reptile (this is obvious, of course, but it would help to have the icon to remember that the game differentiates between these). Also, it would be nice to have the first scoring/second scoring payouts printed on the animal cards as well. Any time you can put info on the cards or on a chart, always put the info on the cards if you can do so without cluttering them up.

Good luck with your game, I think it will be fun to play!

Best,

Jeff

Maybe the currency type can be fix to an animal, for exemple animal from africa are bought with african money etc...

"Bidding for turn order" could just mean that there are 5 markers numbered 1-5, and in bid order, you choose a token (ie, if you want to go last, you just choose the 5 token). Of course, you can use whatever player order selection method seems best.

My broader point was that your game is, in some sense, a management game; you need to balance making money (by opening the zoo) with setting yourself up to score (via buildings and animals). And I think that the tension that comes from that kind of decision making will be sustained even if you don't have bidding. The really nice thing about bidding is that it could allow you to get a popular animal by being willing to pay more for it, as opposed to in "my" version of the game where you could get closed out by someone going before you. That's why I advocated a "bid for turn order", so you retain the "if I really want something, I can pay enough to get it" effect.

Another option might be to have the "buy animals" turn action be "You can buy the animal for twice (or thrice, or whatever) the printed cost, OR you can place the animal up for auction with the printed cost being the starting bid". Of course, you'd need to adjust the values of everything after some playtesting. But this might add a risk-reward element whereby you can try to get an animal "on the cheap" but there's a risk that you won't get it at all.

Anyway, this is a nice, simple game that I think has a lot of potential. Keep at it!

-Jeff

Maybe one interresting variation for the theme, will be "noah's ark".

They're is a lot of animals that need to be save from the disaster, and their is different "Noah's" competiting to save the most animal and bring them on their boat.

You can use all of you mechanism and you'll make points when the boat a level of the boat is filled. That way you can even put some "male" and "female" animal that give bonus points if you get a couple.

Then do you will have less chances to be compared to zoosim :)

That's just an idea :)

I did consider this, but it doesn't work because there are too many issues about breaking ties (where do you break them from etc.)

(Sorry this isn't about your game now, so I'll try and make amends :-) One idea for your auction would be to use the Goa technique: put an animal up for auction, but the winner pays the person who put it up (or they pay the bank if they put it up.) That way, you have another revenue stream beyond just opening your zoo (you could just keep auctioning off animals, collect the money and build a theme-park (i.e. all non-animal attractions) instead ;-)