Menagerie comes from the designer collective known as Prospero Hall, which was acquired by Funko Games in 2019 but then effectively shut down when Funko sold its games division to Goliath Games in January of 2024. There were a few releases last year that were probably already completed when the sale took place, so this is the first new game we’ve had from Prospero Hall since late 2024 (the Only Murders in the Building tie-in game), and one of fewer than a half-dozen in the last eighteen months.
That makes it all the more disappointing to report that this game just doesn’t work. It feels unfinished, with moves almost automatic and no real strategy beyond collecting cards in the same colors you already have. The art is fantastic and the cards are high-quality, but beyond that, I don’t see anything here.
Players in Menagerie, which has the unwieldy full title Menagerie: Unlock the Wonders of a Miniature World, are collecting insects for their collection. Each player has three rows in their terrarium and must choose a different one on each turn into which they will place the insects they select. Then they get to pick two adjacent insects from the six on display and place them in that row, possibly using one of the relatively powerless powers from the symbols on the cards to move an insect, take an iridescent crystal, or break the adjacency requirement. Play continues until someone fills their terrarium with 15 cards, at which point you score.
The bulk of the points come from sets of the same color within a row, with the biggest bonus coming from getting all five cards in a row to be the same color. Each player also gets one private objective card to start the game, and leaning into that can also produce significant points. There are also some small point awards for getting sets of the same symbol within a row.
There is nothing to do in Menagerie aside from taking two cards of the color you want for that row if at all possible. You pick the row before the turn, so you can see what cards are available, and you can pick the row best suited to hold those cards. You can’t refresh the display, which seems like the most obvious power to give a player. It’s just the luck of the draw, and if you’re playing with just two players, you can plan ahead another move or maybe even two by anticipating what the other player might select.
I was a little surprised to see a game this thin come from Prospero Hall, as the group made a strong name for themselves for producing highly thematic midweight or medium-light games for family play, games like Pan Am, Horrified, and Villainous. I didn’t like the last Prospero Hall game I reviewed either, the 2023 game based on the film Rear Window, and looking back through their catalog, the last game of theirs I played and liked was 2021’s The Rocketeer: Fate of the Future. Maybe the makeup of Prospero Hall has changed, or different people are taking the lead, but Menagerie makes me think that their brand isn’t what it used to be.
Menagerie came out last August and remains a Barnes & Noble exclusive, which you can buy here.
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