Components

1 Hook box game board

15 region cards

3 season cards

24 task cards

4 player pawns

5 lion cards

5 zebra cards

5 crocodile cards

5 baboon cards

5 hyena cards

5 gazelle cards

3 ammo cubes

3 food cubes

3 fuel cubes

Overview

Safari In A Pocket is a cooperative game for 1 to 4 players. You step into the shoes of a safari park ranger. You work for the most frugal employer imaginable with minimal compensation. You must keep tourists happy, care for animals, and repel poachers. Beware, working here is not easy. Your daily tasks will soon pile up and you’ll likely find yourselves scrambling to keep up with the hectic pace.

Set-up

1. Unfold the inside of the game box and lay it out flat. This is the game board and you will keep track of tasks here. There is also other valuable information.

2. Search for the base camp region from the region cards and place it at the center of the play area. The region deck has the following card back:

3. Shuffle all the rest of the region cards and arrange them randomly around the base camp in a grid as shown in the visual example further below. Each time you play the regions will be arranged differently. Below is ONLY an example.

4. Each player picks a colored pawn and places them at the base camp. This is where they will be starting.

5. Each player picks any two supply cubes to begin the game.

Orange = Ammo

Red = Fuel

Green = Food

6. Place one card of each animal species into play. Leave the remaining animal duplicates on the side. You will be using them later.

7. Shuffle the deck of tasks and place them in a face-down pile anywhere accessible.

8. Place the three seasons on their grey side near the game board.

9. Place the remaining tokens (supply cubes, black poacher meeples, and white tourist meeples) in a shared bank within reach. You will be using these a lot.

Starting The First Round

Gameplay is divided into rounds. Inside each round, there are two steps that occur. The first step is called the Task Step. It's followed by the Action Step.

The last person who visited a zoo is the starting player.

Task Step

At the start of the Task Step, move all existing tasks on the gameboard to the right once. It goes as follows: New Task → Current Task → Urgent Task → Fail(discard)

Then, draw a new task card and place it face up on the New Tasks area of the game board. The amount of new tasks revealed ramps up as the game progresses.

On the first round of play, reveal one task. On the second round reveal two tasks. On every round after the second round, reveal three tasks.

This will get overwhelming really quick and players will have to prioritize or ignore certain tasks.

Once a task moves through all the task areas on the game board and moves OFF the “Urgent Tasks” area, it is placed in a separate pile and counts as a fail. Simply set it in a designated fail pile nearby.

The last thing to do in the task step is to refill the base camp with supplies. If any of the two spots on the base camp has no supply on it, pick any supply from the shared bank and place it there.

Action Step

Beginning with the starting player, each player performs up to two actions. After performing up to two actions, the next player to the left performs their two actions until all players have done so.

Actions are listed below. Perform two of these actions or perform one action twice. You may also skip your actions or perform one action and skip the second action.

When any supply cube or meeple (poacher and tourist) is spent or removed, simply return it to the shared bank for later use.

Completing Tasks

To complete tasks, players simply need to accomplish what is written on the task card. Once a task card is completed, place it into a discard pile somewhere nearby.

Tasks that fail are NOT placed in the discard pile. Failed tasks are placed in a separate face up pile. Keep track of the highlighted number. This number is the failure amount. You will be calculating the total failure amount from all failed tasks.

Winning/Losing

Players lose the game anytime their failure amount is equal to 11 or more. Players win the game when they draw exactly 0 cards from the task deck during the task step.

Regions

Some card effects will call for tokens to be placed or moved to certain regions. This simply means that they move towards the nearest region of that type, even if there isn’t one exactly touching it. If there’s a tie for where a token would move, pick any.

The type of the region is indicated by their artwork as shown below.

Border Regions

The regions highlighted in red below are considered border regions. Poachers are placed in these regions when a task calls for it.

Poachers And Tasks

Arresting poachers may only count towards one task. This means that if there are multiple poacher tasks in play, arresting poachers does NOT complete all those tasks at once. Each poacher only counts towards one task.

Season

There are three season cards. Season cards are double-sided and begin on their greyed-out side. Some requirements must be met before season cards are flipped to their colored side.

The season cards and their effects are detailed below:

The Golden Rule

Many rules and situations that come up during play may not be explicitly explained in these rules. However, the GOLDEN RULE of playing “In A Pocket” games is that you improvise when faced with an unexplained game mechanism.

Anything that isn’t specifically stated in these rules should be “homebrewed” in a fair way that is both clear and fair to all players.

Recap

Every round, new tasks are assigned until it piles up to a chaotic mess. Perform actions to complete tasks. You must run across the safari, hunt poachers, and manage guests and animals.

Each safari ranger only has two actions so be sure to maximize your action economy. Those tasks aren’t waiting for you!

Remember to pick up supplies. You can’t perform actions if you can’t spend the required supply. Complete the entire task deck to win. However, if you fail too many of them, the safari will fall into bedlam and ruin.