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Imagine that you received a few hundred hectares of land anywhere in the world. You carefully exchange any non-indigenous plants with native ones, recreating an environment where a variety of animals can live, including dozens of endangered species. Some of these endangered animals were victims of human violence or were found wounded and many of them were saved from illegal trade. In Sanctuary: Endangered Species, each of you will create a sanctuary for different endangered animal species. With the help of volunteers and rangers you will develop your facility, take care of your animals, and recreate their natural habitat as you try to save them from the impacts of civilization. You will maintain order and monitor animal's behavior – everything to ensure that the animals in your sanctuary are happy and safe.
The Sanctuary: Endangered Species is a worker placement game. At the beginning of each round, you lay out a row of cards each of which has a main action and side action. Players take turns placing their workers on those cards in order to perform actions. Each worker "sees" and can perform their main action and any side actions that are within their line of sight, which is limited by other workers and by obstacles printed on the cards. These actions help you to find new animals and improve their living conditions. The key is to choose the right card at the right moment and to perform your available actions in the most efficient order.
—description from the publisher
- Gorgeous game
- Appealing theme of saving endangered animals
- Solid gameplay
- building a sanctuary for endangered animals
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Area Building — you're building like a sanctuary.
- Set Collection — collect these animals
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- Here are my 10 favorite.
- The theme disappears pretty quickly. It's more about a puzzly type game than it is about the theme.
- This is the kind of game that you would accidentally buy at a museum gift shop and be like, 'It's probably not that good.' and you go, 'Wait a minute, it really is.'
- This is where you're building like a sanctuary. This is with these really endangered animals and I think that's kind of the draw to this game.
- The silliest game on my list, but I like it a lot.
- This is one where you're going, oh, this is actually a one that we can work together and win as a family.
- Ark Nova is a fantastic game, one of my favorite games I've ever played.
- it's the animals and the theming of it that put it over the top for me because I like having a Bengal tiger in my zoo and some spider monkeys and whatever else might be in there. I love that concept.