Paper Safari
Paper Safari Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Objective
At the start of a round, each player receives 6 cards and lays them out face down in front of themselves. On each turn, a player draws one card and exchanges it for one of their own cards, placing the new card face up. The round ends when one of the players has all 6 of their cards face up. The player with the lowest total score on their cards is declared the winner of the round. The game continues until a player has won three rounds.
Components
50 cards:
- 4 cards of each animal (values from -2 to 10)
- 4 Tarzan cards
- 2 Safari cards
12 victory cards
Game Setup
- Set the 12 victory cards aside (they are identical on both sides).
- Deal 6 cards face down to each player (players must not look at them).
- Place the remaining cards in the center of the table — this is the deck. Turn over the top card and place it next to the deck — this is the discard pile.
- Each player arranges their cards in two rows of three cards each.
- Each player chooses one of their own cards and turns it face up.
- The player who was most recently at the zoo goes first.
Turn of Play
On their turn, a player performs two actions in order:
- Draws the top card from the deck or from the discard pile. If the deck runs out, shuffle the discard pile, place it in the center of the table, and turn over one card, as during setup.
- Exchanges this card for one of their own. To do this, the player sends one of their own cards to the discard pile (face up) and places the drawn card in its spot (also face up).
If a player drew a card from the deck, they may send it to the discard pile without exchanging it for one of their own cards (exception: the Tarzan card).
Players may not look at cards that are lying face down (exception: the Elephant card).
Players may not swap the positions of their own cards.
Special Cards
There are three special cards: Tarzan, Elephant, and Safari.
Tarzan
When a player draws the Tarzan card from the deck or the discard pile, they MUST exchange it for one of their own cards. The card that the player replaces is not sent to the discard pile as usual — instead, it is passed to the player on their left. That player must place the card they received in the same spot that Tarzan occupied, and pass their own card to the player on their left in turn. This process repeats until the player to the right of the player who drew Tarzan replaces one of their own cards; that player's card is placed at the bottom of the discard pile.
Example: Nastya draws the Tarzan card from the deck and uses it to replace the first card in her top row. The other players exchange cards around the table in turn, each passing their own displaced card to the player on their left, until the chain returns to the player on Nastya's right, whose displaced card goes to the discard pile.
Elephant
When a player draws the Elephant card from the deck or the discard pile, they may look at one of their own face-down cards. If the player uses this option, they must exchange one of their own cards for the Elephant (not necessarily the card they looked at).
Safari
At the end of the round, the Safari card counts as having the same value as the card to its right or to its left (the owner's choice).
Example: Misha's field contains a Safari card between a card worth 3 and a card worth 5. Misha may decide whether his Safari card counts as 3 or as 5.
End of Round and Scoring
The round ends when one of the players has all 6 of their cards face up. At that point, the other players also turn all of their cards face up. Each player adds up the values of all their cards.
IMPORTANT: if a column contains two cards with the same value, their sum counts as 0.
The player with the lowest total is declared the winner of the round and receives a victory card. If several players are tied, the winner is the one with more cards of the highest value.
Shuffle all the cards together and begin a new round. The winner of the previous round becomes the first player.
Example — Misha's score: his two rows are 3, 1, 5 (top) and 0, -2, 5 (bottom). The two 5s share a column, so that column scores 0. The total is 3 + 0 (first column) + 1 + (-2) (second column) + 0 (third column) = 2.
Game End
The winner of the game is the first player to collect three victory cards.