Family Games with Dolphins

My beautiful Sarah the gamer

Actually had some time at the end of Family night to play a game with Michelle and Sarah, and their game of choice was Aquaretto. We had always liked Zooloretto when it first came out, a great family game with a decent amount of strategy and a fun family theme of zoo animals. My daughters Brittany and Hannah always like it as they had played Zoo Tycoon for years on the computer. Aquaretto was a real step up as you had to create your own "pools" for aquatic animals instead of pre-defined exhibits. It made for more strategy, along with earning workers that could be used in a variety of ways for points. My favorite mechanic from these Michael Schacht games is the placement of tiles on different "trucks", then choosing the timing of when to take a truck. You can choose early and get a few of what you want but run low in animals, or wait and take a full truck but risk being forced to takes animals you don't want (and will score against you). In this game I went for trainers as my workers and was able to collect and place Orca, Dolphins & Seals that scored more off of trainers. My cute little Sarah (not so little at age 10) always seems up to playing a game and is pretty smart in figuring out strategy.