Family                 

Alter                    6

Spezial                

Monkey Business

LIONS ON THE STACK, LION DRAWN!

The naughty monkeys have freed the zoo animals, they are hiding out in the jungle and you are tasked with catching the animals. 52 animal chips are placed in the bag which represents the jungle. The 8 bonus tiles are laid out open-faced, they show the animals and the total amount of each animal in the bag. The starting player draws a chip, lays it down and can stop or continue. If he continues and draws another animal than before he can again decide. If he draws an animal twice, he must give back all chips collected in this round. If you draw an animal that is visible on top of other stacks you collect all of these animals, and can go on, again until you stop or draw an animal twice. If you stop, you stack the animal on top of the previously stacked ones. If you have only animals of one kind laid out, you can place them at the bottom of your stack, but must end your turn afterwards. Special rules apply to monkey chips: you can swap them for another animal chip from another player, but cannot collect animals of this kind from other stacks. When all animal chips are given out, you sort your animals. If you hold most animals of a kind you receive the corresponding bonus tile. You win with the highest total of animal disks and bonus tiles.

Monkey Business offers a very nice and cute version of the if-only-I-could-stop mechanism with a good balance of luck and tactics as well as a good family topic. As the bonus tiles show the number of animals you can give an educated guess if you could still achieve a majority, but you need to watch your fellow players carefully.

Players         : 2-6

Age             : 6+

Duration       : 20+

Designer      : Reiner Knizia

Artist           : Bob Haime

Price            : ca. 11 Euro

Publisher      : Piatnik

Web             : www.piatnik.com

Genre          : Risk or stop game

Users           : For families

Version        : multi

Rules           : de fr hu

In-game text : no

Comments    :

Very nice version of a well-known mechanism * good mixture of luck, observations and a bit of tactics * good family topic

Compares to :

All acquisition games with stop-or-risk mechanism

Other editions:

Currently none

Chance: 2

Tactic: 1

Strategy: 0

Creativity: 0

Knowledge: 0

Memory: 2

Communication: 0

Interaction: 3

Dexterity: 0

Action: 0