This is another game of the "race to get rid of your cards" type. Where it differs from Career Poker, The Great Dalmuti and the folk game from which those two derive is that it is played purely for points and with a special deck, which, unlike the standard one, is not linearly ordered. The cards in this case depict animals and there are rankings based on who has reason to fear whom. So, for example, the sardine fears the perch, the seal, the crocodile and the whale, but it does not fear the polar bear, for whom it would be too small a meal to be of interest. The perch and the seal, however, do fear the polar bear. In general, little animals fear more creatures than do big animals--though the hedgehog, as you would expect in a game from Doris and Frank, is an heroic exception to this, fearing only the fox. At the top end, the whale fears nobody, the lion and the crocodile worry only about the elephant and the elephant, with a touching display of phobia, is only afraid of mice.

One player leads to the trick by laying down a number of cards of the same type. Thereafter you may either pass or lay down a 'better set'. A 'better set' is either the same type of animal but one more card or the same number of cards but of an animal that outranks the previous one. This continues until you reach a stage where the person to play finds that the set they played last time still rules the roost. The trick is then set aside and this player starts a new one. So for example, a trick could go one crocodile; two crocodiles; two elephants; two mice; two foxes; two polar bears; all pass. The person who played the polar bears would then start a new trick by laying down more cards from hand, maybe three sardines, hoping that nobody would have three of a kind of one of the sardine's predators.

The first person to get rid of their cards scores one point for each player in the game, the second to finish scores one less and so on down to the last player to get rid of their cards, who will score two. This leaves one person with cards still in their hand and they score zero. The game is to a pre-set points target, usually 19. For the second and subsequent hands the game offers you a choice of either playing the same way as you did in hand one or forming temporary partnerships based on the current score.

And that is it. The game is certainly not another Mü, but it is entertaining and does offer some scope for tactics and planning. The cards are easy to use--pictures show which animals outrank the one just played--and wonderfully illustrated. Tell Doris that the assignment involves hedgehogs and the woman becomes inspired!

The game is also available from Rio Grande games under the changed title 'Frank's Zoo'. (The German title translates as 'Trouble in the Zoo', which seems like a better title to me, but I'm sure they had their reasons.)