If you have ever wanted to try a Bruno Cathala design without spending a penny, here is your chance. Drôles de Zèbres, a fast two-player game from the designer of Kingdomino and 7 Wonders Duel, has just been added to Board Game Arena, where you can play it in your browser for free.
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Set up your group for freeDrôles de Zèbres is a light area-majority game that runs about 15 minutes. You and your opponent take turns dropping animal tokens into the enclosures of a safari park, and whoever ends up with the majority in an enclosure scores every animal inside it, your rival's included. That is the sting in the tail, because a single well-placed token can flip an enclosure and hand you a pile of points your opponent thought were safe. Steering the whole thing is a ranger called Cathala-Jones: after you place a token you shuffle him one to three spaces around the park, and wherever he stops decides which row your opponent has to play into next. It is a tight puzzle of tempo and denial rather than a sprawling strategy game, which is exactly what makes it such a good filler.
The version now on Board Game Arena is Cathala's 2025 re-illustration, a rework of a design that first appeared back in 2004. He teamed up with cartoonist Martin Vidberg for a completely redrawn, deliberately silly look, published through Entrejeux. Cathala is one of the hobby's most dependable names, with Kingdomino taking the 2017 Spiel des Jahres and 7 Wonders Duel and Splendor Duel both becoming go-to two-player staples, so a free-to-try entry in his catalogue is worth a few clicks.
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Find events near youIt is an ideal lunch-break or end-of-night game, and now it lives online there is nothing to buy or set up to give it a go. If it wins you over, it makes a tidy two-player pick for your next game night.
Sources: Board Game Arena | Bruno Cathala
