A more streamlined Ark Nova?

Have you ever played Ark Nova and thought to yourself: “It would be even cooler to build a zoo if it didn’t take 3-4 hours”? In that case, Sanctuary might be the exact thing you are looking for! 🦒 Sanctuary is the new Ark Nova spinoff game from SPIEL25, that feels familiar, but works differently and is a lot more streamlined.

The action selection is similar. 👉You have 4 action tiles under your board, and their position defines their strength. After you use a tile, it goes to the leftmost lowest strength slot, and everything else slides to the right, getting stronger. 🔁

The main difference is how instead of cards you only have hex-shaped tiles now. In Ark Nova you had to build enclosures into your zoo and play animal cards to fill them up, in Sanctuary you only place down a tile and that’s it. Tiles come in 3 different types:
🐾Animals that you can play with 1 of 3 actions depending on their habitat type. The bigger the animal, the stronger action you need.
🔬Projects that you can play with your 4th action. These let you specialize your zoo by giving you diverse ongoing benefits.
🏬Buildings you can play as an additional free action, but only if you satisfy the condition of the tile.

You start placing tiles at your zoo entrance, then can always build adjacent to previous tiles. Some animals require more space, meaning you have to place facedown tiles adjacent to them in the given direction(s). The spatial puzzling of tiles is the primary source of fun: some tiles score for adjacent continent or habitat icons, and buildings require some pre-planning too. There is also no more money-management - every tile is free, you just need the appropriate action strength.

The end game trigger is also simpler: If someone either fills up their zoo completely or places their 4th conservation project, the game is over. 

I think the game turned out well. Our biggest gripe with Ark Nova was always that it was too similar to Terraforming Mars, which we just flat out prefer. Sanctuary is a lot further away from that design. I am also happy to be rid of the cumbersome coffee break track. 😄 Being faster and lighter really works out in Sanctuary’s favor! 👍