Base price: $20.
2 – 4 players.
Play time: 25 – 30 minutes.
BGG Link
Buy on Amazon (via What’s Eric Playing?)
Logged plays: 7
Full disclosure: A review copy of Nimalia was provided by Lucky Duck Games.
So, we made the unfortunate decision of watching Madame Web this evening, and you’ll be pleased to know that it’s bad enough that I figured out how to functionally write a review while I watch it because it’s real bad. We shouldn’t have done this. But our loss is your gain, since I managed to write an entire review while I watched! So in the meantime, enjoy my thoughts on Nimalia, from Lucky Duck Games!
In Nimalia, players work tirelessly across six rounds to build an animal preserve! As you do, you’ll draw and pass cards between the various players, playing one each turn. At the end of each round, you’ll check your preserve against the current combination of scoring cards for that round. They ask for various things, like where your ice squares are or what’s adjacent to an otter or how many bears you have. You know, the usual. So are you going to focus on scoring now or are you going to score later?
Overall: 7.5 / 10
Overall, I like Nimalia! It harkens back to some of my favorite games in Button Shy’s -opolis catalogue with its whole “cover cards with other cards to score points for random objectives” thing, which, while I’m aware that Sprawlopolis didn’t invent the concept, it’s certainly one of my favorite examples. Here, there’s a variety of animals and challenges to choose from, and I appreciate the multi-modal scoring that happens (as you score different combinations of cards each round). For a short and quick game, players will likely appreciate the modularity of both play and scoring, since you need to prioritize different things at different times to score. Do you want to claim a few points now or start setting up for a massive payoff later? Priorities abound. I do particularly like the incredibly weird scoring card that you place the individual scoring cards on. That’s all nice; very visual. The varied difficulty also helps a lot, though it would be nice to have more Objective Cards.
On the front of Objective Cards, more would be good, though I appreciate how engaged various cards are with both the Terrain types and the Animals (and occasionally the presence or lack of water). I think they’re a good mix of challenges, though. A surprising number of them focus on the Otters? Again, not particularly upset about it, but more variety goes a long way, especially when it drives how you’re assembling your animal reserve. On the assembly front, well, this is exactly the kind of game where you can mess up your entire reserve with a casual swipe of the hand, but there’s not much you can do about that beyond being careful with how you’re placing each card as it comes to you. With most drafting games, you can also do a bit of hate-drafting, especially since players are forced to place the final card they draw. Since some objectives penalize you for having certain features, you can drop some points for your opponent by just passing them a card with those features as the final move. It’s a little mean, but quite effective.
That all said, I think Nimalia is a great little tableau-builder. For me, I’d like to see something with more of a hook to really connect it all together and keep it as a long-term mainstay in my collection, but in the now it’s quite pleasant and fun to play. I generally like these kinds of card-placement builders anyways, so, it all continues to be up my alley. I wouldn’t necessarily call it an inherently deep game; I would just say that it scratches an itch that I frequently have for a game with modular scoring and flexible play. That kind of stuff is great. If you’re looking for that kind of game, you enjoy fun animals, or you just like figuring out how to work your way through various scoring conditions, Nimalia might be up your alley! I’ve had fun with it.
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