KUZOOKA
Putting the ape in great escape
Designer: Leo Colovini | Publisher: Pegasus Spiele
Forget MacGyver. Laugh in the face of the A-Team. Because the real building-stuff-out-ofseemingly-random-items experts turn out to be cheesed off tropical animals escaping a zoo… well, at least if Kuzooka is to be believed.
You start by choosing your peeved animal, which each comes with their own unique ability… of varying usefulness. The seal, for example, seems hugely powerful, while the parrot is a little tougher to use. Thankfully, you’re given suggestions of which to use for your first games, so you’re not left floundering, which is great for new players.
Then it’s time for the great escape, using trash, things like popcorn boxes and ice cream spoons, thrown into the enclosures each day. The issue is, you’ve got to work out the best plan and find the correct number of a single item in seven rounds… all without speaking a word.
At the start of each round you’re dealt a hand of trash, and have to give clues to your fellow players to indicate know what’s in your hand (or should that be paw?). You do this by placing one of your animal tokens along a winding track that weaves through the zoo. Unlike similar co-operative games like Hanabi, you’re able to see what’s in your hand… the problem is, you can’t tell anyone. Instead, depending upon where you place the token, it provides a hint about the colour and potential quantity of certain cards in your hand.
Once you’ve placed your token, the next player has two options: give another clue or try to escape. If they give another clue, they need to place their token ahead of the last one that’s been placed, and they can’t skip a zone (a zone being a set of icons grouped together on a light or dark background). This restriction adds a tactical element because you may not always be able to give the clue you want, but you don’t want to stop the round by trying to escape too early. Decisions, decisions!
With good sleuthing, you can start to build a picture of what’s in each player’s hand. Eventually it’s time to try and escape and all players reveal their cards. Depending upon where the last animal token is placed, you have to match colours and numbers, e.g. five yellows. To win, you’ve got to place clues all the way up to the white end of the zoo track and then find the coloured cards specified in the ‘escape zone’.
Unfortunately, it’s almost impossible to get to the ‘escape zone’ in the early rounds because you don’t have access to enough cards. Your effort isn’t wasted, as you gain experience from each escape attempt, which can be used to unlock additional cards. The further you make it along the track, the more experience you’ll gather and the more cards you can unlock. As such, there’s a spicy push-your-luck mechanic that adds an exciting twist to proceedings and encourages clever clue giving and risk taking. Get it right and you feel like champs. Get it wrong and you feel like chimps.
Keeping variability high, Kuzooka includes two different ways to increase the difficulty: an alternative zoo map and two additional levels that require more XP to unlock additional cards. Not to forget the many potential animal combos to experiment with.
Kuzooka has got the hallmarks of co-operative puzzler, like Hanabi and Beyond Baker Street, combined with the push your luck nature of Skull or Lie. It’s a premise that probably shouldn’t work but Kuzooka ends up being a lightweight family game with a surprising amount of replayability.
ROB BURMAN
WHAT’S IN THE BOX?
◗ Double-sided game board
◗51 Item cards
◗10 Animal cards
◗20 Experience Stars
◗10 Experience cards
◗3 Difficulty level cards
◗6 Overview cards
◗6 Universal tool cards
◗120 Wooden animal tokens
TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED BEYOND BAKER STREET…
The theme shines through in both, but Kuzooka has more options, thanks to alternate difficulty levels and different animals.