Sanctuary: An Ark Nova Game Board Game

Build Your Zoo. Place Your Tiles. Find Your Sanctuary.

Ark Nova is one of the most celebrated eurogames ever published — a deep, rewarding, sometimes demanding zoo management masterpiece that sits near the top of BoardGameGeek's all-time rankings. Sanctuary: An Ark Nova Game is what happens when designer Mathias Wigge takes that same DNA and refines it into something leaner, faster, and more immediately accessible without sacrificing the satisfying puzzle at its core. Published by Feuerland Spiele, this is a standalone title built for one to five players who want the Ark Nova experience in roughly half the time.

Fans of the original will recognize the action card system and the animal-focused theme right away. But Sanctuary has its own distinct identity — it's a tile-drafting, tableau-building game where every hex placement is a small puzzle, and the satisfying click of the right tile in the right spot never gets old.

Tiles, Tactics, and a Zoo That's Uniquely Yours

Each player gets their own zoo board that holds up to 23 large hexagonal tiles. On your turn you draft a tile from a shared market of six and then take an action using one of your four action cards — three of which let you place animals by habitat type (forest, rock, or water), and one that lets you play projects. The power of each action depends on the slot the card currently occupies: the longer you've waited to use it, the more impactful it becomes. It's the same elegant timing mechanic that made Ark Nova so compelling, applied here in a tighter, faster-moving format.

The 135 unique zoo tiles — animals, buildings, and projects — are the heart of Sanctuary. Tiles score points through adjacency, set collection, and tile-specific effects, which means placement decisions carry real weight. Getting a mating pair of animals side by side feels great; realizing you've painted yourself into a corner and can't fit the tile you need is the kind of satisfying tension the best puzzle games are built on. Five shared conservation objectives give everyone common scoring targets to work toward, while the random tile supply and market dynamics ensure no two games play out the same way. Solo play is fully supported, and the game carries Feuerland's black label — their mark for games aimed at experienced, strategic players.

Specifications