Animals: Apes / Monkeys

Overview

For The Win is an abstract strategy game in which each player gets ten tiles, two of each character representing Monkeys, Zombies, Pirates, Aliens, and Ninjas. The objective is to connect five (or more) of one's tiles, including at least one of each type, together (sides and corners count). Additionally, all five (or more) tiles must be face-up, or unactivated. The game ends immediately when a player achieves this goal. Each character type has a specific ability to help you toward the objective.

Gameplay

Players take turns using either 1 or 2 actions within 5 action rounds. Once one player's actions are consumed for a round, the other player(s) get to use any of their remaining 5 actions at once. Judicious action management is key; if one budgets one's actions wisely, one can play several actions in a row for game-winning combinations. The available actions are as follows:

Add a tile to the Grid
Move one of one's tiles
Refresh or flip a tile face up
Shove a tile or column/row of tiles
Activate an ability (the chosen tile turns face down; see below)

Characters & abilities

Alien — The Alien uses her tractor beam to pull any tile in the Grid to a space that is adjacent to her.
Monkey — The mischievous Monkey uses a banana peel to flip over all of the tiles it is touching.
Ninja — The sneaky Ninja can move from his current spot to any other unoccupied space in the Grid.
Pirate — The Pirate uses his trusty cannon to blast an adjacent tile to any unoccupied space in the Grid.
Zombie — The Zombie can infect any adjacent tile. The infected tile is removed from the Grid and replaced with a Zombie tile that has not yet been added to the Grid. If all of the Zombie tiles have already been added to the Grid, the Zombie may choose one adjacent tile and deactivate it (that is, flip it face down).

In Zooloretto, each player uses small, large, wild, and exotic animals and their young to try to attract as many visitors as possible to their zoo – but be careful! The zoo must be carefully planned as before you know it, you might have too many animals and no more room for them. That brings minus points! Luckily, your zoo can expand. A zoo of a family game in which less is sometimes more...

Can be combined with

Aquaretto
Zooloretto Mini

As former lab monkeys, players cooperate and compete to free imprisoned monkeys from a well-guarded testing facility. Of course, since the monkeys don’t have keys, they must use their creativity and the items found around the lab to pick, pry, and smash the cages open. The more monkeys you rescue, the more reward you receive.

Players race to be the first to collect bananas while overcoming three obstacles: the snake landslide, the palm tree carousel, and the adventure bridge.

The push-your-luck game Cheeky Monkey includes eight sets of animals – three elephants, four seals, and so on up to ten monkeys – with a plastic chip representing each animal. To start the game, you place all the chips in a bag.

On a turn, a player may draw chips until either (1) he chooses to stop or (2) he draws an animal that he has lying in front of him from a previous draw this turn. In this latter case, he returns all chips in front of him from the current turn to the bag, and the next player then takes his turn. In the former case, he stacks the chips in whatever order he wants on top of any chips he's collected in previous turns. (If a player has animals of only a single type, he can tuck them on the bottom of his stack.) Two special rules come into play while the player draws chips:

If a player draws an animal chip that matches the animal on top of an opponent's stack, the player can steal this animal, adding it to the chips currently in front of him. (If he busts for drawing a duplicate animal, this stolen chip is also returned to the bag.)
If a player draws a monkey, he can either keep the monkey (as with any other animal) or he can swap the monkey for the chip on top of an opponent's stack.

When the last chip has been added to a stack, the game ends. Any player who has more chips of an animal type than any other player receives bonus points equal to the total number of that animal in the game. The player with the most points wins.