Flip-A-Zoo

All the animals at the zoo have escaped. It was actually a prank by those mischievous monkeys who opened the cage doors. All the animals are now hiding in the zoo, and it's your job to find them and lock them back in their cages.

Flip-a-Zoo is a reverse memory game with a push-your-luck mechanism. You flip a tile on your turn and can continue flipping tiles until you decide to stop... or until you bust yourself. In the 4+ version, this only happens if you've flipped the same animal twice. The 4+ version is also played with fewer tiles. If you bust yourself, you must return the tiles face down, allowing your opponents to (try to) remember where each tile is. If you stop in time, you can take all collected tiles and keep them for yourself. Whoever collects the most tiles wins the game.

Once your children have mastered this variant, you can throw all your tiles into the fray, but you'll also need to add an extra rule. You'll now be out of the game if you turn over the same color three times during your turn. Otherwise, the game remains the same.

The next step is where the monkeys come to the rescue. Each player receives two wooden monkey figures, which they can place on a tile after busting themselves. This tile is protected for them, and other players can't turn it over until it's their turn again.

In the final variant, you still play the same way, but the scoring is adjusted. If you have one animal of a species, you score one point. If you have two animals of a species, they score a total of 5 points. If you have all three animals of a species, you score 0 points for those three tiles. This adds an extra dynamic to the game, because now you might turn over a third tile of a species and perhaps want to get yourself busted as quickly as possible. But do you still remember exactly which tiles you need to turn over for this without giving your opponents too much information? The monkeys for reserving tiles are also very useful now.