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ZooSimPlease note:
This is an imported item.
Game components are language-independent.
Manufacturer's rules are printed in multiple languages (including English).
  
from 4 customer reviews
Product Awards:
Games Magazine Awards
Best Family Strategy Game, 2004
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Attract the most visitors into your zoo! As a zoo manager you construct your own zoo to attract visitors into your zoo. Visitors are attracted by large zoo areas for certain types of animals. But don't forget to place the paths in your zoo so that visitors can walk loops through your zoo. Visitors like many trees in a zoo, too.
A light, blind bidding game with attractive pieces, Zoosim works well with 3-4 and plays quickly, thus acting as a good filler. I recommend following one Spielfriek's advice: get multi-sided dice in order to keep track of who has the most stars in each animal type. In our first couple of games scoring was confusing as people failed to keep track of who had earned a majority.
Zoosim is a good game with a pleasing theme. How many of us haven't wanted to build and design our own zoo at one time! The goal is to earn points by attracting the most visitors to your zoo. The games moves fairly quickly. There are 5 rounds. During each round, 5 zoo tiles are bid on by players. The tiles have various paths and animal types on theme the more stars by the animals the more attractive the exhibit. There are also trees on the tiles which invite visitors to rest in the shade at your zoo. Bid is simultaneous (closed fist style) so it moves quickly. Ties in bidding are decided by the 'flagpole.' The highest flag wins the tie but then goes to the bottom of the pole. Tiles are placed and attractions tallied and then visitors distributed. Vistors are worth x1 in the first round, x2 in the 2nd and so on. There is a first and 2nd place with visitors. Visitors may also get stuck in 'pathloops' at your zoo (I guess they just keep going around in a circle and can't find the exit to visit your opponent's zoo). You earn income by the size (number of tiles) in your zoo. this goes for 5 rounds and the game is over. Simple yet challenging.
Well, right now my wife and I earn enough such that we could pretty much afford any toy our son would want. As a result, he doesn't always have to think about saving money or spending wisely. So how do you teach being careful with money, when you have enough?
One way is Zoosim, and after a few games our 5-year-old is already learning that just because he wants a certain tile, it doesn't mean he should bid everything he has for it, because then he can't afford anything else (plus, the prices for subsequent tiles gets much cheaper once everyone starts running out of cash). The rules are simple enough that he can see that certain tiles have a lot of value, certain have little, and most are in between.
I'd give this game 4 stars, but for most gamers there are some flaws that probably prevent it from being a favorite for a long time. For instance, it can get very confusing keeping up with who has the most (or second place) of whatever. Second, in some games one player might get lucky and pretty much runaway with the game after that (though the special scoring mechanism alleviates some of this problem).
In brief it's a fun enough game that can teach the value of saving and spending under the right circumstances.
After a careful look at the O Zoo Le Mio back cover, I see trees, park benches, and that the visitors are in 5 colors, apparently 3 per color.
So it would seem that O Zoo le Mio fixes one of the major problems with ZooSim (ie, how to tell who's got what visitors and for what reason). If I ever play that game, and if this happens to be as I suspect, then I'd give it 4 stars. Too bad I bought ZooSim before the 'fixed' version came out.
