Description translated from Queen website:
"Nelly the hippopotamus (German: Nilpferd) lives in a small lake in Afrika, together with her friends the little turtles and a heron.
Here she has everything she needs, and her firends like to sit on her back, however there are also little crabs in the lake that like to pinch her in the nose ...
The turtle climbing competition with a big hippo body made of wood and an extra-large game board."
In Nelly Nilpferd, the players try to place their wooden turtles on the (hemisphere shaped) back of Nelly, which can become quite crowded as the heron lives also there.
Players have three different actions: placing a turtle on Nelly, feeding Nelly with a water plant or moving the heron.
Whenever Nelly accidentally eats a plant with a crab underneath, she is pinched in the nose and goes diving. Now at least some of the placed turtles will fall down and have to restart. The player who places all of his turtles first wins the game.