Imagine you are the architect of an animal sanctuary, and your goal is to create the most balanced and efficient refuge possible. In Nimalia, you have 5 rounds to build this space, but it's not as simple as it seems. Each round features a classic draft: you draw three cards, pick the best one for your plan, and pass the remaining ones to the next player.

The real trick (or the 'panda trick'!) is how you assemble the board. Each card contains four biomes with different animals, and when placing a card, you must cover at least one existing biome. The catch is that your sanctuary has a strict physical limit of 6x6, so every single square counts. You can't just toss cards randomly; you need a strategy to optimize the space.

To make things more interesting, there are scoring objectives. While the game comes with a pool of various goals, not all of them are active at once. Each round only counts a few specific objectives. This means what was great in round 1 might become irrelevant by round 3, forcing you to adapt your sanctuary's structure and overlap cards to change the local fauna and score with the current goals. It's a game of constant adaptation and space management. At the end of the 5 rounds, the player who was the best environmental manager and accumulated the most points wins. It's fast, visually appealing, and perfect for those who enjoy a light strategic puzzle.