First Impressions – Sanctuary

It’s time for another “first impressions” post about a game that I’ve just played for the first time but which I may not play enough to eventually review.

Or maybe it’s just new enough that I want to get my impressions out there and I may eventually play it enough to review.

If that happens, I will update this to say that!

Long-time readers of Dude Take Your Turn (and you should join! We have coffee and biscuits in the janitor’s closet at our local Canadian Legion) know that Ark Nova has been one of my top games for a while now.

Some people say it’s too long, and I can’t totally disagree with that, though it’s good enough that I usually don’t care about that.

It has inhibited playing it sometimes when we don’t think we have enough time.

Sanctuary is a bit of a tile-laying, streamlined version of Ark Nova with some of the same symbology and not many of the same mechanics.

In fact, it’s almost a totally different game, though you can see the DNA running between the two.

Sanctuary was designed by Mathias Wigge with art by Dennis Lohausen, Christof Tisch and Felix Wermke. It was published by Feuerland Spiele and Capstone Games in 2025.

As I said, it’s a tile-laying game rather than a Tetris-style game where you are building up your zoo by placing differently-sized habitats for the animal cards that you then play.

Is it too streamlined?

Does that matter when both can exist independently of each other?

Does it give you the same experience in a shorter time?

You’ll find out in the next episode…damn, I used that joke too recently.

Never mind.

Let’s just get to it.

The tiles in Sanctuary are just hexagonal tiles that are either different animals, buildings, or “projects” (kind of like sponsors in the original) that you will be placing out on your much smaller board.

One of the endgame triggers is for someone to completely fill their board, and that is distinctly possible.

There is also a display of new tiles that you will be drawing from at the beginning of your turn.

The limit of where you draw from is dependent on the position of one of your action tiles.

Yes, there are action tiles that will be shifting after you use them, but not in the way you think!

One of them is your grey project tile, and where the arrow is pointing determines how far into the display you can draw your initial tile from.

However, you can also play a Project tile with it, or play one of the animals from habitats based on the other three Animal tiles (Water habitat, Rock, and…some kind of Tree?).

The different animal types are played to your board using those tiles, and you have to have the appropriate tile pointing to the proper action number or higher to play it.

Some also require “open ground” next to them.

That’s indicated by the white arrows, and you either have to already have an Open Ground tile ready in that position or you have to play one of your other tiles face down to give you the Open Ground.

You can see how it would be quite easy to fill your board (or come close, anyway), especially when one of your possible actions on top of playing an animal or project is to play a building (assuming you meet the conditions of that building.

The Amazon Area needs to be next to two Americas continent tags. If you have that after placing your animal, you can put the building out for free (there is no money in Sanctuary, much like the future in Star Trek).

It’s possible to play 4 or 5 tiles on your turn if you really work at it.

Projects (like the Partner Zoo Americas above) will often give you ongoing bonuses or a one-time thing (sometimes both!).

They take the place of Sponsors in the original game.

The Bronx Zoo gives you a permanent 2-strength discount on playing Americas tile and lets you take one Americas tile from the display, if there is one.

The other thing you can do, if you meet the criteria, is fulfill a conservation project.

Even though the rules and mechanics are different, you’re still conservationists!

Each game there will be five Conservation projects out, and they will be having tiles of a certain animal or continent symbol.

Unlike the base game, you’re not fighting your opponents for these.

No, you’re fighting yourself!

Each player has a 2, 3, 4, and 5 Conservation Project tile, and putting all four of them out is one of the endgame triggers.

You decide which project you will only get 2 of, which one you will get 3 of, etc.

There are conservation chits that you can gain through various ways that you can use as a “wild” for any project.

You can only do this once per turn, even if you qualify for more, so be wary as the game end approaches.

You might get left out in the cold.

Each tile that doesn’t give you a special ongoing ability of some kind will score you points at the end of the game.

Obviously, you’re trying to amass as many points as possible!

Whoever triggers the endgame gets 10 points. Everybody else gets one more turn and if they do something that would have triggered the end (if it hadn’t been already), they get 5 points.

That’s it!

First, let’s address that elephant in the room so it can go back to it’s sanctuary.

Yes, this is streamlined Ark Nova, almost as much as Terraforming Mars – Ares Expedition is streamlined Terraforming Mars (and I see that Capstone and the designers decided to go the ultimate route of the Ares Expedition designers/publishers and just remove the original game from the title to begin with instead of doing it later).

Both play very differently than their predecessors, but have plenty of familiar stuff.

The Conservation Projects, the animal symbols, the habitat symbols, all are there but are also very streamlined.

Is it too much?

Who cares?

If you don’t want a streamlined Ark Nova, then you can play the original.

If you want one that plays faster and still has the same goals (without the same mechanics), then this is perfect for that.

I may not say “I want to play Ark Nova but we don’t really have the time. How about Sanctuary instead?”

I will say “hey, you want to play Sanctuary?” though.

There are definitely things I like about the game, from the tactile, BIG nature of the tiles that you’re laying out to the fact that it doesn’t take up that much space comparatively.

I love how the “Release an Animal” projects don’t actually remove the habitat and country icon (though of course it does remove the animal icon because, you know, the animal’s not there anymore!).

That would be an annoying decision to make if a continent was one of the five Conservation Project options and you did lose the continent.

I also like that the Open Ground still gets you one point, considering the number of animals that require at least one, and many times two Open Ground spaces next to them.

And that your board comes with two pre-printed Open Ground tiles on it, though one of them is unreachable at the beginning if your initial tile draw happens to require it.

That’s what your other tiles are for, though!

The action tile system works really well too and is very streamlined.

You’re just using them for three different types of animal habitats (and the fourth for your projects) and upgrading them just does two things: It flips the arrow to the right side instead of the left (so you can now potentially do 5-strength actions with it, which you can’t before it flips or if you have a discount from a project) and it allows you to play 1-2 animals with strength up to where your arrow is at rather than just one animal.

Upgrading your green Animal tile will allow you to play both the Green Iguana and the bird on the left that’s blocked by the turtle, as long as you had a discount for one of those continents (the only way you could play animals with a total of 6 strength).

If you avoid looking at Sanctuary as Ark Nova lite, then I think Sanctuary is a pretty cool game overall.

I’ve always liked tile-laying games, as long as I don’t have to play Tetris with the tiles.

It has some neat mechanisms, some very cool scoring methods (I did very well with the tile that gave me one point per Open Ground tile, essentially doubling those points).

I love the Conservation Projects and how it’s up to you how you want to fulfill them.

It’s almost required to do some of them, though, considering how many points you get from them.

But it’s not totally required, as red only did two and she came in second!

Though she did fill her board, so that got her some points as well.

This will never replace Ark Nova for me, though I don’t think it’s supposed to (though Ares Expedition did knock Terraforming Mars down a peg or two for me).

Looked at on its own strengths, though, Sanctuary stands up pretty well.

Don’t let that “too streamlined” feeling get you down.

Even better, it plays well at 5 players (with some of the usual downtime, but still)!

The original only plays 4.

Take that, original game.

Sanctuary worth checking out on its own.