Nimalia review — Casual animal themed card game

In a day and age where tabletop games have become increasingly more complex and take hours to complete, sometimes it’s refreshing to see something much simpler and quicker to play. William Liévin’s newest game Nimalia does just that, with its animal themed card drafting and tile laying mechanics. It can be played between 2 to 4 players and is extremely easy to pick up and learn. Players have five rounds to build the animal sanctuaries of their dreams whilst trying to score objectives on different criterias per round.

Sounds pretty straightforward right? Because it actually is! Every player draws 3 cards at the start of every round and places 1 down to add to their animal grid and passes the remaining 2 to the player sitting on their left. Repeat this until all cards are placed. You must place cards that overlap with at least 1 of the 4 sections of an existing card, meaning you can’t place cards directly next to each other. The other rule is that your entire animal haven must fit within a 6 by 6 square as well. Cards contain 4 different regions that feature various different animals and locales. You got your cute penguins in the arctic region and crocodiles lounging in a body of water. The artwork does look a bit childish and basic, but it gets the job done. I do wish there were more variety in the animals though, as there are only about 5 or 6 different ones.

 

So how do you know where to place your drawn cards? There’s an objective card for each round that dictates what combinations or setups of sanctuaries score what. Round 1 might give you 2 points for every savannah region you have on your board, whereas round 2 might reward those who have lots of bears by rivers. Just because you invested in one objective doesn’t mean you’ll win in another, so it’s best to think about how you want to build your grid beforehand. Different patterns and animal combinations are usually the name of the game when it comes to these scoring criteria, and this game offers quite a lot of variety in terms of it. Some objectives even subtract points for having certain animals on your board. The player with the most points at the end of 5 rounds wins the game, as denoted on a handy dandy scoreboard.

Each session doesn’t take very long at all, as a game with 2 players takes around 15 to 20 minutes whereas 4 players might take upwards of 30 minutes to finish. Rounds go by extremely fast considering only 1 card is played out of 3 and drafting is done simultaneously. It’s a casual pick up and play type of experience that’s perfect to take on a road trip, considering the travel friendly and compact box that it comes in. There’s also not a lot of pieces to tidy up either aside from a sleek deck of tile cards, the scoreboard, objective cards, and the player tokens. Easy set up and tear down.

That being said, I wouldn’t discount Nimalia as a generic filler game either because there’s some depth here. Aside from building your own animal haven to complete objectives, you are also encouraged to peek over at other player’s boards to potentially block them from scoring some extra points. There’s a balance between cultivating your own board and monitoring neighbors’ boards to ultimately come out victorious. This competitive mechanic does just the job to keep players engaged without being overly complex. The choices are always quite simple to make, but require just a bit more strategic thinking and planning.

Nimalia is an extremely beginner friendly and approachable game, especially for non-gamers and those new to the tabletop scene, but it’s lacking substance and depth for those looking for something more. As you play more and more of it, you’ll realize that the game can get quite repetitive and scenarios will look the same. Players who are in the lead for scoring in one of the objectives can easily snowball and get out of control, leaving very little room to catch up. As such, the focus then shifts to solely building your own grid for different objectives rather than trying to mess up someone else’s. For example, if someone is already leading the longest river track, and you aren’t even close to catching up, is it even worth it to try and take away river cards or try to build your own? Probably not so it’s in your best interest to capitalize on a different objective instead.

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