We’ve played a couple of 2-player games of Nice to Know! Animals, and can’t wait to share our thoughts with you! 

Game overview:

👥 1-6 players
⌛ 20-60 minutes
🧠 8 years+

In Nice to Know! Animals, players are zoologists investigating animals around the world. On a turn, a player can choose to either study or research animals from the central grid:

• To study, a player discards an animal card to earn up to 3 Research Experience (RE) tokens.

• To research, a player spends up to 5 RE tokens to add an animal card to their personal collection.

How much RE a player earns/spends depends on which row they take a card from. Studying (discarding) an animal from the top row would give you the least RE (1), whereas the bottom row would give you the most RE (3). Similarly, you have to pay more to research (collect) animals from the top row (5 RE), but it’s much cheaper to research from the bottom row (1 RE). Once a card is taken, instead of simply filling up spaces from the draw pile, any empty spaces are filled by sliding down the card from the row above (the top row is filled using the draw stack).

Players can also only research (collect) the animals that match the continent where their meeple is currently located; that is, unless they can pay the exorbitant cost (9 RE) to fly continents, or are lucky enough to catch a sponsored flight card when they come up in the grid (which has to be on the same row as the animal they want to research).

The game ends instantly when a player is the first to research either 18 animals or 5 endangered animals. Points are scored in various ways, including:

• Points on your researched animal cards
• Having the most of a particular type of card (carnivores, herbivores, sponsored flights, endangered)
• Completion of quest cards (private objectives)
• The number of continents you have researched animals in
• Having the most animals in each continent

Player with the most points wins! The rules also include an option to play with simplified rules for younger players, as well as a solo mode.

Our first impressions:

We really enjoyed this Nice to Know! Animals! We’re big fans of animal theming and love the way that it’s been implemented here, like the art and the animal facts on the cards (it’s very similar to Wingspan, Museum, Dog Park, etc). It feels like a race across the world in the pursuit of fun animal knowledge. And it reminds me of the Wildlife fact files I used to collect in the 90s/00s (does anyone else remember these??). 

The theming and design are really up our street, and the mechanisms of the central market are where the game really shines…

The combination of how cards in the grid move down rows to fill gaps, with how much RE you get/pay being determined by what row you choose, is a great design element that gives some strategic gameplay. When is the best time to take the card you want? Do you pay more RE to grab the card you want from the top row before other players get it? Or do you risk waiting/discarding underneath that card until the animal you want gets to the bottom row and is cheaper to research? Do you study an animal on a higher row and earn less RE, because you know it’s an animal your opponent wants? It’s a tricky balance, which I imagine gets even trickier at higher player numbers. 

We like that each quest card has two potential quests to choose from, and you decide which quest to use at the end of the game. We also like that one of the two quests is for a specific animal, but given as a clue that relates to a card’s animal fact. This is great at encouraging you to read the facts on each card to try and find the animal the quest applies to. BUT it’s worth noting that the relevant fact is only on one animal card (even when there are multiple copies of that specific animal). We found that we didn’t get through the whole animal deck in a single game, which meant there was a reasonable chance that the one animal card with the relevant fact wouldn’t show up. This meant we were always using the quest ‘cheat sheet’ to check which animal we needed, which I don’t think is the intention (or it shouldn’t be, in my opinion). It also meant that achieving that quest option was often unlikely.

Animals that are found on multiple continents can only be scored for one continent at the end of the game. So, there’s a step at the end of the game where players assign their cards to the continent they want the animals to count towards. The person with the most animals in each continent gets points, so you can end up in an allocation stalemate to try and win. The rulebook doesn’t (currently) tackle this, so a house rule may be needed, e.g. allocating your animals in secret, or going round in turn and locking allocations in.

Of course we have to mention the cute ANIMAL MEEPLES! If we were being niggly, we’d prefer to see more colour variety – half of the meeples are different shades of blue/grey.  There could have been non-realistic colours (e.g. a bright pink rhino), or some different animals that add others colours into it (e.g. birds and bugs). In fact, there’s no bugs in the game at all – more cute bugs please!

Final thoughts:

If it isn’t obvious, we’re very impressed with Nice to Know! Animals – and we’re gutted we had to send it on! The theming and design are really up our street, and the mechanisms of the central market are where the game really shines and adds a bit of complexity to an otherwise light-feeling game. We could see fans of other nature-themed games like Wingspan, Dog Park and Kavango enjoying this one, or people who enjoy collection games. We can also see it working really well as a family game, especially if the kids are animal nerds (like I was!).

Nice to Know! Animals is coming to Kickstarter in October 2024, so if this sounds like a game for you make sure to follow the Kickstarter to be notified for launch, and check out @NiceToKnowGame on Instagram for more updates.

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This prototype was kindly loaned by HOUF Games via the UK Board Game Review Circle. All opinions are ours and our reviews are always honest.