Wildlife Safari was originally published by AMIGO as Flinke Pinke. This game is one of those 'painfully simple' Reiner Knizia games. There are five different colored chips, with six cards, zero through five, in each of the colors. The cards are dealt out, and then players take turns playing a card and taking any available chip. When one color has all six cards played on it, then the game is over, and players use the last card played in each category to value their chips. The highest total value wins.
Description of 1994 Milton Bradley re-issue Quandary, for 2-4 players:
A game of placement, shares and nerve by Reiner Knizia, this is a lovely edition with nice, heavy tiles akin to Mah-jong pieces in weight and feel. Players in turn lay numbered pieces on tracks curling to the centre, and then take a share in any colour. The round ends when a track is filled. Scoring is based on your total share multiplied by the value of the final tile played on each track. So if you are collecting blue shares, I'll try and lay a blue 1 as near last as possible. Then you'll want to play a blue 5 to raise your possible score, but must take a share in a different colour. Same game, different production.
Description of 2003 Fantasy Flight Games re-issue, Loco!, for 2-4 players:
Here is the FOURTH version of the game that was originally Flinke Pinke only this time, the added "rule" is that whenever you play a card with a value of "0", you must say "Loco!" aloud or forfeit your opportunity to select one of the colored chips. Apart from that, the game is identical.
Description of the 2010 Eagle-Gryphon Games games re-issue, Botswana, for 2-5 players:
This fifth version of the game adds a safari theme. Rules and gameplay are unchanged from the original version (no rules about animal noises), but the chips are replaced by plastic animal figures and the cards are covered in matching animal fur patterns. In 2014, Gryphon Games released a new edition of this game as Wildlife Safari, featuring the same components and artwork but changing the title of the game.
- fun production with wacky plastic animals
- quick and light
- set collection can be fickle
- set collection with animals
- African savannah
- light, humorous play
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- last_card_scoring — Scoring determined by the last card placed in the sequence.
- set_collection — Collect animal cards; the value of the set depends on the last card played.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- this is Puerto Rico so been a little while since I've had this one on the table and this was a fantastic game
- lots of different paths you can go down
- this is a very tight game and you have to be very careful about what you choose at the right time
- Agora expansion is better than the Pantheon one
- I actually think you know controversial opinion I think Agora expansion is better than the Pantheon one
- one of my favorite two-player games of all time
- the end sign... MVP, moving and pulling units
- production of this version is quite funny because you get all these wacky plastic animals in the Box
References (from this video)
- Reprint by 21st Century Games is gorgeous
- Love the artwork and meeples
- Classic game with great production
- Extremely tense
- Simple three-sentence rules but plays tense
- Great tension in simple game
- Animal collection
- Botswana
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Card playing — Play cards for animals to collect tokens
- Dynamic scoring — Animal token values based on how many cards of type were played
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- This is an excellent, excellent trick taking game that you should have in your collection
- One of the most brilliant trick-taking games I've ever seen
- The game has the word kids in the title, but it's better than you might think, but it's simpler than you might think
- Really pleasant. Really surprising how good this is
- There are games that are fine and then there's games that have a lot of tension and those like those games that are really tense, that's when I love it
- It's awful. It's really awful
- I think that it's wonderful. It's an eight for me. Oh, I lost that bout, but my popcorn's popping. Love it
- This is a cool trick taking game
- I would 10 out of 10 times recommend you play distilled instead of this