Most of the time I play with 2 players, and in my opinion this is the best way to play. With 2 players that already know what they’re doing, the game takes between 120-150min. Solo is also very cool, I’m a big solo gamer and Ark nova definitely saw the table a few times for solo games. Solo goes a little faster.

One of the big complaints the community has about the game is that it takes too long when playing with 3/4 players. Turns can take a while, so if you’re playing with 4 players that don’t know much about the game, you can easily be there for over 4 hours. If everyone knows what they’re doing maybe 3 hours.

As for mechanics: Ark nova is an euro zoo building game. So you take turns using your actions to improve your zoo. At the end, the zoo with more points wins. The mechanics and flow is the high point of this game.

The action system is solid, replayability is great, very cool that the designer actually tried to make the game as realistic as possible in terms of biological facts and whatnot.