If you hung around your local zoo after it closed for the night, you’d see the nighttime rituals of the exotic animals you visited during the day. You’d see cages being cleaned, souvenir stands being restocked, and animals being fed and refreshed. If you were lucky, you might catch an impromptu seal show, perhaps a moonlight nightingale concert, or even the monkeys still monkeying around!
And if you stayed late enough, long after the last employee had left for the night, you just might see the greatest, and most secret, of all zoo attractions – the late night Kung Fu fights! Every zoo has wild animals, and they all know Kung Fu!
Welcome to Kung Fu Zoo!
Many of you may be thinking that this game sounds awfully familiar. And you would be right! This game is one of The Malted Meeple’s first Professor Meeple’s Game Lab Participants and comes to us from local designer Charlie Price! We are happy to see such a great game fully published and getting the recognition it deserves!
Kung Fu Zoo is a competitive, dice-flicking, dexterity game for 2-4 players. You and your opponents control a team of classically-trained Kung Fu-fighting wild animals, from crocodiles to zebras. Prepare to engage in Kung Fu battles against your rivals. Who will be tonight’s champions of the zoo arena? Two animal teams enter, one team leaves! Grab some animal dice and find out!
In Kung Fu Zoo, players use six-sided animal dice to do battle in an enclosed arena (the zoo after dark). The game contains two gameplay variants: Cage Battle and Points Match. In either variant, each player will start with a team of dice-animals. In a Cage Battle, each player takes a turn flicking their animals into the arena. Your goal is to knock your opponent’s animals onto their backs which counts as stunning them, or through holes on the board which represent the animal cages. You win a match when all of your opponent’s animals are either stunned or in cages. The first player to win the best of five matches wins the game! In a Points Match, players take turns flicking their animals into the arena. Your goal is to score 21 points before your opponent. Points are awarded at the end of each round, based upon the position of your dice that remain on the board.
The Malted Meeple is proud to make this unique, dice-flicking, Kung Fu game our Game of the Month for March. Be sure to give it a shot on your next visit!
Karington Hess is a lifelong gamer whose passions for hospitality and all things game-related led him to Ravenwood Castle, where he served as an Innkeeper before joining The Malted Meeple. When not pouring beers, crafting milkshakes, or teaching boardgames, Karington can be found behind the DM’s screen, weaving intricate stories for his fellow gamers.