Overview
At a glance
Is this game right for my group?
ABG editorial scores on a 1–5 scale.
Harder to teach
High replayability
Highly interactive
Scales well
Deep strategy
How it plays
How does it play?
The incredible Animal Circus is coming to your home! The animal artists are trained and ready to show you the greatest tricks ever performed.
Core mechanisms
Key systems that shape the decisions players make.
Read the full game description
The incredible Animal Circus is coming to your home! The animal artists are trained and ready to show you the greatest tricks ever performed. But make sure you only send artists to the ring who will be able to outperform the previous one. Because if you don't, the previous artist will take all the glory! Animal Circus is a family card game where every player has the same deck of 22 animal cards. Each animal has a value and a unique special ability. On your turn you draw a new card from your personal draw pile and afterwards you pick a card you want to add to the ring. You have to try to play a card with a higher value as the previously played card or the previous player will win all the cards that are present in the ring. When you played the card you must execute the ability on the card. This ability could have an immediate effect (for example transferring cards from your draw pile to your pile with won cards), a conditional effect (for example you win the cards in the ring if the card on top of you Win pile is 16 or higher) or a rule change (for example, the next player must play the card he draws in the beginning of his turn). As soon as one of the players wins the cards in the ring and there is a player with an empty draw pile the game is over and the player who collected the most points wins (each card is worth 1 point with the exception of a few cards that are worth 3 and -3 points.