Frank’s Zoo Game Review

There was a moment during my second play of Frank’s Zoo (1999, with a 2025 reprint now available from HeidelBÄR and Czech Games Edition) where I found myself sitting quietly, waiting for someone to let me play my hedgehogs.

Frank’s Zoo is a climbing game. Similar to games like SCOUT or the recent addition Jungo, Frank’s Zoo is actually older than both games but feels out of place in a world where there are so many other climbing/shedding games in the marketplace.

This was on full display during this second play. I typically have a good feel for the best ways to shed a hand of cards, but Frank Zoo’s main twist is the option to choose to pass, to ensure you can set yourself up just right to play cards only when you can get rid of as many cards as possible. Usually I would vote to push hard to dump all your cards as quickly as possible, but in Frank’s Zoo it feels like it is situationally beneficial to pass and wait for the right moment to strike.

That’s because, unlike some games in this category, players can never add cards from the discard pile or acquired tricks to their hand. In Frank’s Zoo, a…

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