Conservation Crisis The Game - Review

{Gifted} My 8 year old is very much interested in wildlife, animals and everything related to conservation. When you ask him what he would like to do when he is older he will either answer a Zoologist or a Zoo keeper so he can work on conserving the population of rare and endagered animals. His passion in this we extremely proud of and when we were offered the chance to review the game Conservation Crisis (RRP £29.99) from Tunza Games I knew he would love it. 

Conservation Crisis puts you in the centre of the action. You are in control of a wildlife reserve that is in crisis and needs you to work on saving endangered species, you choose a species and race around the board trying to save it from extinction. I loved the concept of this game, it is almost a bit of strategy mixed with a fun element of being in charge of your own wildlife reserve.

You are given $100,000 of funding per round and you can put this towards a variety of things during each round such as projects to build, staff to hire to help rebuild the reserve and save the endangered species.

- Aimed at age 7 years + and for 2-4 players, with an average playing times of 60 minutes. 

Included in the beautifully illustrated box are: 

- 1 x main board 

- 4 x wildlife reserve playing boards

- 120 x tokens

- 25 event cards

- 4 x wooden playing pieces 

- 15 x community staff meeting cards 

- 10 x bribe cards 

- A selection of dollars 

- As mentioned above the aim of the game is to make your way around the board to the orange locations to buy and rebuild the nature reserve and to increase the wildlife population, the winner at the end of the game is the person who has the most wildlife at the end of the game. 

The set up of the game is fairly self explanatory and each player chooses an animal to save (elephant, tiger, rhino or gorilla) and uses the wooden playing piece of the same board colour. The player then places a token on 0 and 100 wildlife which marks starting with 100 wildlife. 

The wooden pieces are placed at HQ where the game starts. The bribe and community cards are placed on the marked areas and the 'crisis averted' card is placed near the bottom of the event cards. 

A player is in charge of the donor funding and each player receives $100,000 of donor funding ans also a starting crisis fund which may be played during the game but only in an emergency and up to a maximum of $100,000. 

There are no dice in the game which is helpful so they don't get lost! Dice always go missing don't they! You can choose whichever path around the board following the arrows but have to stop on the orange and black locations on the board when they arrived at. When a player stops on an orange location items can be purchased for the reserve. On the black locations the instructions must be followed. Only one player can be on an orange location but multiple players can be on black locations. Once the player has completed the instructions or purchased an item the go is then over. 

The little black tokens are placed on the players wildlife card to indicate what has been purchased, the staff, wages, buildings and wildlife population. The little tokens are what stumped us a little during the game! We weren't full sure what we were meant to be doing with the little black tokens, whether we removed them each go or just kept adding them - the instructions weren't overly helpful either which was a shame.

Once the player has made their way around the board and reached HQ again the player will receive further funding (assuming they have spent all of the previous money, if not they receive no furrther funding until this has been spent). The player must then follow the instruction on HQ which include turning over the bribe card if they have one, take an event card, apply for funding, receive tourist income, pay staff if they have any and receive wildlife. The game then continues. 

This is a great game and even more an important idea and concept, it was really enjoyable to play if not a little confusing at times. My 5 year old lost interest after a couple of rounds but my 8 year old loved it and was getting quite good at purchasing items and became quite competitive! We did feel the instructions were quite lenghty and at times a little confusing but we played it as well as we could. I would defintely  say the age recommendation is spot on, any younger and it is a bit more of a challenge. I think it is a game the more you play the better and more simple it becomes. What I LOVE about the game is it designed to be used as almost an educational tool to bring to the forefront of people's minds the challenge conservationits face around the globe. Even more so for every purchase of the game is donated to the conservation partners and if you download the associated app it will help fund more conservation projects which is fantastic. 

Conservation Crisis is available to order from Amazon and would make a lovely gift for anyone who is interested in animals or conservation or just loves a good board game! 

* Please note I was kindly sent the item free of charge in exchange for an honest and open review, all thoughts are my own.