Tips & Tricks for Director Difficulty

Various tips, tricks, and unobvious interactions in Zoominoes. Targeted at Director difficulty, though many tips should be of general use.

Introduction

This guide contains a bunch of tips, tricks and unobvious interactions in Zoominoes. It’s up-to-date as of 2026-08-14. It's addressed at the highest regular difficulty level in the game, Director difficulty; some of its advice will not apply if you care about other things like lower difficulty levels, hunting achievements, completing your collection, winning dailies, or getting highscores during endless mode (Overtime).

Note that this guide is not remotely trying to be comprehensive. I won't mention every animal, souvenir, or zookeeper, but just a fraction of them, those I felt like writing about.

The Challenge of Director Difficulty

Director difficulty makes the game harder in a bunch of ways:

• Daily score targets start higher, increase much faster, and the final day’s target is even higher still. The score goal for day 28 is a whopping 100000 points.
  
• You have -1 play, which combined with the much higher score goals means you earn way less money.
  
• There’s an extra event every Thursday. This means that you will see roughly a third of all events (8 out of 26) in every run. This both makes the game harder and increases the chance that you'll see events that are particularly detrimental to your current strategy.
  
• Your starter deck which initially contains 12 starter animals of 3 types in 4 colors gets an extra 1-point black Ant, plus one of the 12 starters becomes black. This decreases the point average of your deck, lowers the chance of drawing newly added animals, and the two black animals make it harder to play animals where you want them.

Game Mechanics

Points

• The points displayed on an animal in your deck or hand are a sum of various sources: the animal’s base points value; bonus points from gems; any permanent bonus points gained from snacks or souvenirs or other animals; and any temporary bonus points gained the same way.
  
• Some effects permanently double an animal's points. Giving an animal temporary points before permanently doubling its points essentially “retains” its temporary bonus points for future days. Or in numbers: Let's say we have a Crab with 10 base points B, +5 temporary points T, and then we permanently double its points via the Big Cheese snack. Result: The animal gets +15 permanent points P, and next day it has 10 base points B plus 15 permanent points P, or 25 points total. And in general, if you permanently double the points of an animal with B+T points, then on all subsequent days it will have 2B+T base points.

Transformation

• Transforming an animal via a Soda or animal crucially retains its color and its permanent points bonuses.
  
• This means that you can use an early-game common animal which gains permanent points to accumulate a few points for a few days, and then once this effect can no longer keep up with the increasing points goals, you can try to transform this animal into a more useful one.
  
• And conversely, you can draft an animal in your desired color (a few are even Rainbow-colored), then use a Soda to transform it into the type you want.

Spaces

• Some effects refer to “bonus spaces”. These include not just +points spaces, but all spaces on the board where something special is going on, except the starter space: +play spaces, +coins spaces, x2 spaces, mirror spaces, special event spaces, character-specific bonus spaces, etc.
  
• Permanent spaces added via snacks or animals reappear on subsequent days, but in random positions.
  
• Temporary bonus point spaces added via animals do not reappear on subsequent days. However, any effect which permanently increases the bonus points of a temporary space by P points essentially turns it into a new permanent bonus space worth P points.

Animal Abilities

• A few animals like Rhino or Frog move after being played. The main benefit from this is that it allows you to benefit from positioning-based effects multiple times: you can reuse bonus spaces multiple times, or get souvenir effects like a corner bonus or a surround-based effect multiple times. In addition, the animal gets position bonuses both from its initial space and its final space.

Hand vs. Deck

• A few effects affect your "hand". These affect only the (by default) 4 animals you can currently play.
  
• A few effects affect your "deck". These do not affect your hand but only the animals you have not yet drawn.

Example Archetypes

Here are a few straightforward archetypes which can win on Director difficulty. You don't have to pursue any of them, and doing so isn't necessarily easy, but if you do manage to reach one of them, it should be enough to win even on Director difficulty.

• Monoculture Deck: Try to turn your entire deck into (mostly) one color and type, then use the rare +play animals (Otter plus the type-specific animal) to generate lots of plays, and win by playing some combination of a lot of animals and a bunch of souvenir interactions.
  
• Temporary Powers of Two: Beat the final score goals by stacking a whole bunch of temporary or one-time points-doubling effects together. E.g. Lyrebird, mirror spaces, x2 space, various souvenirs, the Big Cheese snack, etc.
  
• Permanent Powers of Two: A straightforward way of beating the final 100k points goal on day 28 is to repeatedly and permanently double a specific animal’s points via souvenirs, spaces, or snacks. Just take care to play around a bunch of events like Talent Scout and Touring Test which explicitly impede this strategy.
  
  • Vogelkop (uncommon): Starts at 1 point but keeps all points bonuses. Start with applying a few absolute points bonuses, then double its points each day, and you’ll easily out-score 100k points.
    
  • Bunny (uncommon): When played, Bunny puts a copy of itself into the deck. Unstated is that the copied bunny has the points of the scoring bunny, not the bunny in your hand. For example, if you have a x2 space or a souvenir which doubles an animal’s points, then you can spend all your resources on buffing a Bunny, then double its points, and then next day you'll have a new Bunny with more than double the points of the previous Bunny. You can repeat this process each day and end up with a ridiculously huge Bunny capable of easily beating the final day, though with the caveat that you need enough animal removal to remove the lower-scoring bunnies lest they clog up your deck. If you remove the old Bunny each day, then this is essentially identical to the Vogelkop approach.

General Tips

Starter Deck and Deckbuilding

• Each character has sets of 3 starter animals, one with an ability and two without.
  
  • The two starters without abilities are the weakest animals in your deck (besides the added black Ant), only suitable for removal (via e.g. Ghost Pepper snacks, Shark, Crocodile) or transformation (via e.g. Soda snacks, Stork).
    
  • The good starter animal with abilities is something you should try to incorporate into your strategy or even build around if its effect is powerful enough, as its copies are likely to remain part of your deck for much of the run.
    
  • This also means that a Character with e.g. a Land starter should lean somewhat towards drafting other Land animals.
    
  • And conversely, if your weakest 2-point starter is e.g. Sky, that's a slight incentive against drafting Sky animals.
• On Director difficulty, one of your 12 starters becomes Black. This means that your deck consists of 2 Black animals, 3 other colors à 3 animals, and a final color à 2 animals.
  
  • When adding the first few animals to your deck, consider this initial color distribution. After all, adding a great animal to your deck won't help much if you can't actually play it.
    
  • That said, if this problem does occur, you can mitigate it by buying Snowcones in the next shop.

Shops

• Spend ~all your money, provided there's a realistic chance of reducing the number of required Plays until the next shop. After all, there's no Balatro-style Interest mechanic in the game, so there's hardly any benefit to saving money for future shops.
  
  • For example, buying a Common souvenir in a shop during the first week likely saves you Plays and thus recoups some of its investment by the time the next shop comes around. Conversely, many Common souvenirs might well not save you any Plays by week 3.
    
  • For example, Snowcones in your deck's dominant colors have a good chance of saving you Plays by allowing you to play a high-point animal next to an animal that used to be of another color, and their opportunity cost is low at $1.
    
  • For example, Triple Skewer (+3 points for $1) has a decent chance of saving you a Play during week 1, though probably not afterwards.
    
  • For example, depending on the deck, by the time the rare +10 points snacks which cost $4 become available in the shop, they might not save you any Plays due to the severe score requirements on Director difficulty.
• By week 2, if there's nothing that particularly suits your deck, consider Rerolling the shop if you have enough spare coins.

Special Events

• Before drafting your first animal, and every few days afterwards, check the events. A few events will really screw you over if you don't take them into account when drafting animals or purchasing items in the shop.
  
• In particular, consider at the very start whether the day 4 event is dangerous; a few events with increased score requirements cannot be beaten by the starter deck if you only add low-scoring utility commons.
  
• Notes on a few particular events and what strategies they punish:
  
  • Best for Last: Your starting hand is filled with your smallest animals. <-> Easy if your deck's median points are high, but dangerous if you rely on a few high-scoring animals you might not necessarily draw.
    
  • Dance Party: When you play an animal, a random animal in your hand runs off the dance floor to the bottom of your deck. <-> Punishes decks that rely on hand-buffing and particular animal sequencing.
    
  • Earthquake Drill: Each play an unused space falls through the ground. <-> Punishes decks that play or create lots of low-scoring animals, or that rely on surrounding particular animals.
    
  • Face Paint Day: When you draw an animal, it turns random colors. <-> Punishes mono-colored decks that have an even distribution of Types, as random colors make animals much harder to play; as well as decks that have color-related souvenirs.
    
  • Fancy Fest: A normal day but fancier, so it's harder. <-> This higher score goal is dangerous whether on day 4 or day 28. On day 4, decks that have drafted low-scoring utility animals so far might straight-up lack sufficient points to win.
    
  • Freedom Fest: There are no rules, animals can go wherever they want. The goal is higher. <-> Similar consideration to Fancy Fest.
    
  • Long Long Day: +5 plays, double the goal. <-> Similar consideration to Fancy Fest.
    
  • Mirror Universe: The zoo is filled with Mirrors. Double the goal. <-> The mirrors replace all regular +points bonus tiles, thus punishing decks which rely on such bonus tiles. Also has the same danger as with Fancy Fest.
    
  • Talent Scout: The animal that completes today permanently leaves for another zoo. <-> Punishes decks that rely on one particularly strong animal to win. If you can erase a weak starter instead, this effect is instead an upside.
    
  • Touring Test: Your highest point animal is away touring at another zoo. <-> Similar effect as Talent Scout, without the upside. Not nearly as dangerous as Talent Scout if your deck contains two or more strong animals.

On Drafting Animals

Benefits of adding an animal to your deck

• Especially on the first few days, the newly added animal will be worth far more points than the animals in your deck. That means if you can play them, this will save you Plays and thus increase your income.
  
• Some animals have permanent effects. The earlier you draft these, the more often you can play them, and thus the more often you benefit from the permanent bonuses.

Drawbacks of adding an animal to your deck

• Each animal you add to your deck increases the deck size, which decreases the chance that you will see any particular animal on a particular day.
  
• Each animal costs 1 Play to play, so by default you can only play ~7 animals per day. If you draft too many low-impact animals, you'll likely be forced to play them even on later days when they can no longer make a dent in the score goal.
  
• Crucially, these drawbacks hardly apply to animals which consistently grant +Plays. Such animals are almost "free" to draft and play.

Drafting in the early game

• In the early game, you need some animals that can score notable amounts of points, but at Common rarity these effects quickly fail to keep up with the increasing score goals after a few days. In the meantime, animals at Common that have other effects have a higher chance of remaining relevant throughout the run, though potentially at the risk of costing you extra Plays and thus Coins in the early game. For example animals that manipulate your hand, or which erase animals from your deck, or which gain +Plays.
  
• At common, there are several low-scoring animals with economics effects like granting +1 coin or reducing shop sale prices or similar. These are rather weak at Director difficulty because the score goals are just too high, and thus playing such weak animals can well cost you more coins than they gain you.

The +Play cycles

• There are multiple cycles of +Play-granting animals in the game which reward or compensate you for having lots of animals of the same Type or color:
  
• At Common there’s one animal of each Type with +1 Play if played adjacent to the same Type.
  
• At Uncommon there's one animal of each Type which unconditionally grant +1 Play each.
  
• At rare there’s one animal of each Type granting +1 Play for each neighbor of the same Type, plus Otter which grants +1 Play for each neighbor that shares its Color.
  

Notes on Common Animals

I initially tried to write something about any animal I had something to say about, but this quickly got way too long and time-consuming, so I got far more selective. Sorry about that.

• Bald Eagle (3p): Get an extra sale in your next shop. <-> Weak. You can’t guarantee that the sale will hit something useful, and because the Eagle only scores 3 points, drafting and playing it will cost you coins relative to other Common animals.
  
• Caterpillar (1p): “+3 permanently. If I score 15 or more points, I permanently transform into a Butterfly.” <-> Butterfly is a fantastic animal, but you can’t afford to play Caterpillar for 5 whole days, provided you even draw it. So if you draft it, you need to use bonus spaces, snacks and other animal and souvenir effects to quickly reach the 15p threshold.
  
• Clam (5p): Get $1. <-> Mediocre. On Director difficulty, score goals ramp up so fast that Clam’s comparatively low stats will often cost you Plays, and thus coins.
  
• Fennec (3p): Get a random gem. <-> Random gems are rather weak, but even a random first gem likely already represents roughly +4 points added to your deck, which is the worst-case scenario. Synergizes with animals and effects that care about gems or number of souvenirs.
  
• Blue Rhino Beetle, Green Scarab, Red Ladybug, Yellow Swallowtail: Give <Color> animals in your hand and deck +1 permanently. <-> These effects are rather weak. I prefer Fennec’s random gems, which e.g. also benefit future animals added to the deck.
  
• Gulper Eel: Put the leftmost card in your hand on the bottom of your deck. If it matches my color, +1 play. <-> If you can semi-consistently trigger the color condition, this is a very strong effect. Many animal effects affect the leftmost animal in your hand, and sometimes you want to affect another animal without playing your leftmost animal. In that case, Gulper Eel comes to the rescue.
  
• Honey Badger: I don’t care about rules, I go where I want. <-> This is a surprisingly strong effect at Common. It allows you to make use of more bonus spaces, makes it much easier to trigger souvenirs that care about playing animals in corners, etc.
  
• Longhorn: Same effect as Gulper Eel, but no chance to gain +1 Play. That makes it significantly weaker, but some decks might still like this effect.
  
• Cheetah, Hummingbird, Sailfish, Shrimp: These all conditionally gain +1 Play, which makes them very good for Commons IF you have a reasonable chance of fulfilling their conditions.
  
• Lyrebird: Double the ability of the next animal you play. ? This effect is decent early on and can remain relevant throughout the game, which makes it a good early draft pick.
  
• Mosquito: If I have a neighbor with no abilities, +1 play. <-> Decent effect, but suffers from the fact that you eventually want to remove all animals without abilities from your deck. I prefer the other +Play animals.
  
• Octopus: Turn a random animal in your hand Black and give it +5 permanently. <-> On Director difficulty, turning your deck Black can work, and it helps that Octopus is available early on at Common. Your deck starts with 2 Black animals, which helps, even if one of them is a weak Ant. That said, Black snowcones are much rarer than the other colors, hardly any newly drafted animals are Black, and thus when drafting later animals you'll need to consider how to actually get them into play.
  
• Panda: When I'm played to a corner, get a random snack. <-> Feels a bit cumbersome on Director difficulty as the extra Black animals and the need to visit more +points tiles make it harder to fulfill the corner condition early on. If you can make it work, though, this is a pretty strong effect, as the snacks lean towards Common rarity but aren't restricted to it.
  
• Raccoon: Put your hand on the bottom of your deck and draw a new one. <-> This is a rather unique effect. Is pretty strong early on as all decks start with low-scoring starter animals you'd rather not play. Has anti-synergy with hand-buffing effects though.
  
• Rhino (8p): I charge sideways as far as I can. <-> Odd effect. It allows Rhino to potentially benefit from two bonus spaces, and other animals to benefit from the bonus space Rhino was played on. Combine with drafting snacks which create permanent bonus spaces.
  
• Sea Urchin (7p): When I'm played to a corner, +7 permanently. <-> Is even harder to trigger than Panda because of the random Ant in the deck which makes it lean slightly towards Land animals. If you can make it work, the effect itself is very strong for the early game, though. And once it becomes irrelevant, you can transform the powered-up Sea Urchin into something more useful.
  
• Shark (4p): I eat the leftmost animal in your hand (and permanently remove it from your deck). <-> I love card removal in games, and this is no exception. That makes Shark one of my favorite Commons. Deck-thinning is strong enough that it can even be worth spending 1-2 extra Plays each day in exchange for getting an extra Shark into play, but don't go too far on this, as extra coins can also be spent on card removal in the form of Ghost Peppers or Sodas. Amusingly, Shark can become a slight liability in the lategame; at that point, consider removing or transforming it.
  
• Squirrel (7p): When I eat a snack, feed it to a random animal in hand as well. <-> I find this effect rather weak on Director difficulty, because of the lack of money and the higher score goals. It doesn't do much when used with Snowcones, and there's only one +3 snack at Common.
  
• Starfish (7p): When I'm played to a starting space, +6. <-> Terrible. One of the worst Commons. Your starter deck consists of 13 cards, with Starfish it's at least 14 cards, so there's already only a 4/14=28.6% chance that Starfish is in your opening hand and even has a chance of being played on the starting space. And even if you fulfill this condition, the payoff is tiny!
  
• Tadpole (1p): When you use me to complete a day, permanently transform me into a random animal with +20. <-> This can easily win or lose you a run. Random transformations are very powerful, and +20 points permanently is extremely so on a Common, but that's only if you can actually fulfill its condition, which requires a combination of setup (accessible bonus spaces, snacks, or point-granting souvenirs) and luck (i.e. drawing the Tadpole at the right time). Worth building around if there's nothing better to draft, but don't try to add Tadpole to a deck already containing Caterpillar or other animals with their own restrictive conditions.
  
• Walrus (3p): Whenever my points increase, +1 permanently. <-> I don't like it. Except for +points spaces, this effect is harder to trigger than it sounds, and the payoff is tiny.

Notes on select Uncommon Animals

As mentioned before, I'm only writing notes on a few animals here. And I'm stopping at Uncommon, so there are no notes on Rares and Mythics.

• Arctic Fox (10p): Permanently turn all animals in your hand my color. <-> This is my favorite animal in the game. A single Uncommon can turn your entire deck mono-colored within a few days, making it much easier to play animals wherever you want while benefiting from a whole bunch of souvenir and animal effects. And if you’re lucky enough to make this Arctic Fox rainbow-colored, it becomes even better.
  
• Bunny: Add a copy of me to your deck. <-> What makes this effect powerful isn’t properly listed here: The generated copy has the scoring points of this bunny. For the implications, see the section on Archetypes.
  
• Crocodile: I eat all neighboring animals and permanently remove them from your deck. <-> A more powerful version of Shark. Worth playing around; can easily remove multiple Sea animals or ones of its color with a single play, and then even more if combined with Snowcones.
  
• Dolphin, Dragonfly, Zebra: Gain +1 Play. <-> Unless there's something even better on offer, these animals are always worth drafting unless their combination of Color and Type makes them nigh-unplayable in your deck, and even then they're pretty much always worth using a Snowcone on.
  
• Goose (8p): Gain $3. <-> Provided I'm not currently struggling to reach the next shop, this is almost an auto-pick for me. In contrast to Clam's $1, $3 is just a lot of $. And it synergizes beautifully with effects like Lyrebird (double the next animal ability) or mirrors.
  
• Gopher: Get a copy of your favorite gem. <-> If you happen to have a useful gem (e.g. Sky or Yellow if you're drafting a deck containing mostly Sky or Yellow cards), then this is a pretty strong effect. Every subsequent gem is worth +1 more, so if you start with a +1 gem, then this animal text reads "Give all Sky/Yellow/X animals in your +2 points. Then increase this effect by one.", which is decently strong for an Uncommon.
  
• Squid: Permanently turn all neighbors Black. I get +5 for each one that changed color. <-> Much much harder to make use of than Arctic Fox, but still reasonably powerful.
  
• Stork: Transform your leftmost animal in hand into a random animal. <-> The current ability text doesn't make this clear, but this transformation is permanent. This makes it a very strong effect. Fulfills a similar role as Shark and Crocodile, but even has a chance of transforming animals into mythics. And if you don't like the resulting animal, you can just transform it again, and again, until you find an animal you like.
  
• Vogelkop: Point bonuses on me are permanent. <-> Buildaround and game-winningly strong with point-doubling effects, of which there are many in the game. And even if you don't find one, random point bonuses from e.g. +points spaces can still quickly make Vogelkop competitive with at least your Commons.

Snacks

Misc. Notes

• One item in the shop has a discount. If this discount affects a $1 Common snack, its price is reduced to $0, i.e. it becomes free.
  
• On Director difficulty, the flat +points snacks and bonus spaces are comparatively weak because one has so few coins to work with. Meanwhile, Ghost Pepper at $1 and Sodas at $2 are great value.
  
• Honey: has some neat interactions with animals and souvenirs which care about surrounding an animal, or having lots of adjacent animals of the same color and/or type. Also, this is the only snack in the game that can score points by itself; it can even win a day without playing any animals.
  
• Super Ghost Pepper: the existence of this snack makes it somewhat desirable to try and use your regular Ghost Peppers to first eliminate one of your 3 starters completely, so that Super Ghost Pepper can erase another 4 starters all at once.
  
• The uncommon Sodas only cost $2 and are quite strong in the early game and mid game. When used to transform an undesirable starter animal, they’re like a mix of Ghost Pepper (because they remove an undesirable animal from the deck) and a points-increasing snack (because starter animals are worth few points).
  
• Rock Candy: At $3, this snack is extremely expensive relative to its effect. There is no Black gem, so if played on a Black animal, you always get a gem corresponding to the animal’s Type.

Snacks by Effect and Rarity

Type	Common ($1)	Uncommon	Rare	Mythic
Snowcone	Red/Blue/Green/Yellow	Black (+5 points)	Rainbow	—
Increase animal points	Triple Skewer (+3 points)	—	- 4 Berries: +10 points to a Color - 3 Cookies: +10 points to a Type - Pancakes: permanently swap this animal’s points with your lefthand animal	- +100 points - double points
Ghost Peppers: delete animals from your deck	Ghost Pepper	—	Super Ghost Pepper: delete an animal and all other animals with the same name from your hand and deck	—
Sodas: transform an animal	—	Land/Sea/Sky Soda	—	Mythic Soda
Spaces: permanently create or modify a bonus space	—	- 5 Up: +5 space - Tasty Coin: +$1 space	- +10 - starting space - double a space’s points value - +1 play	- x2 space - mirror space
Other	—	- Honey: surround a space with black Ants - Mystery Box: get two random snacks of any rarity, but weighted towards Common - Rock Candy: get a random Gem matching the animal you give this to.	—	Fish Eggs: create a permanent copy of an animal in hand and put it on top of your deck

Souvenirs

(Again, I stopped taking notes at Uncommon rarity.)

General Notes

• There are 112 souvenirs: 7 Gems, 27 Commons, 33 Uncommon, 36 Rares, 9 Mythics.
  
• Gems: These grant +1 point to a Color or Type, and each subsequent copy of the gem grants +2, then +3, etc. <-> Purchasing these in the shop for $2 feels quite weak to me, to the point that they're rarely worthwhile after the first week, if even that. Gem bonus points only increase slowly for owning multiple gems of the same type, you only see 8 shops (plus rerolls) in the game, and there are 7 different gems, so it’s unlikely that you’ll get a lot of the same one even if you aim for it. I recommend only buying Gems rarely.
  
• Commons: Most commons grant a small amount of temporary or permanent points. These can be valuable early on, recouping their investment by saving you Plays, but get outscaled quickly.
  
• Rares: A bunch of Rare souvenirs allow you to double your points. Making good use of these is a good way of beating the 100k score goal on day 28.

Noteworthy Common Souvenirs

• Cheetah Mask ($3): “Your first animal each day can go anywhere.” <-> An extremely valuable effect. Must pick. This allows you to play animals on bonus tiles from the start, or into corners which many animals care about, etc. It also significantly reduces the risk of having to Redraw because you run out of animals to play on adjacent tiles. Finally, consider that this souvenir costs $3 while the inferior Appetizer snack which merely creates an extra starter space costs $4…
  
• Coffee Mug ($3): You have +2 plays. This breaks at the end of the week. <-> This grants you net money if bought on Wednesday.
  
• Coupon Clippers ($3): Your shop has an extra sale. <-> Valuable economy purchase. Sales can even grant you extra free snacks if they hit the $1 snacks.
  
• Delivery Stork: Your shop sells an extra snack and souvenir. <-> Another good economy effect, though hard to purchase during week 1 as it provides no immediate benefit.
  
• Land/Sky/Sea Incense: Your rewards will always have a Land/Sky/Sea animal with +5. <-> The points bonus is significant in the early game, and if you’re solidly locked into drafting this type, it’s a good purchase, but don’t discount the downside of seeing less animals of the other two types.
  
• Piggy Bank: Get $1 each day. <-> Also pretty good, though note that most Common souvenirs which grant points ideally save you 1 Play on the first few days, so Piggy Bank can sometimes take quite a while to pay off.
  
• Playing Cards: +1 hand size. <-> Very good effect relative to the low cost.
  
• Rainbow: At the start of each day, permanently add a random animal to your hand and turn it Rainbow. <-> Weird. Rainbow is a powerful effect, but filling your deck with random animals quickly becomes detrimental. This souvenir warps your entire run and must be played around.
  
• Rolly-Polly: Your rolls cost 2 less. <-> Very strong. Gives you a free reroll in this shop and every subsequent shop. And in contrast to other economy souvenirs, this one even has a chance to pay off immediately, if you reroll into a snack that gets discounted to $0.

Noteworthy Uncommon Souvenirs

• Beary Bank, Double Prize, Employee Discount Card, etc.: Strong economy souvenirs.
  
• Double Moon: When you play a Black animal next to another Black animal, double its points. <-> Useless if you have no way to consistently make animals Black or Rainbow; game-winningly powerful if you do. And if you have just one Black animal and one animal you use to score points and which you can make Rainbow, that can be enough to make this souvenir great.
  
• Double Rainbow: <-> Same effect and caveats as Double Moon.
  
• Early Bird: Your first play’s ability happens twice. <-> How good this is depends on how good the average animal ability in your deck is.
  
• Maze: When an animal in your hand gains points, it’s permanent. <-> Doesn’t interact with snacks at all; requires drafting a hand-buffing animal to instantly become great. Note that this souvenir affects neither buffs to your deck, nor to your played animals.
  
• Mining Kit ($6): At the end of the day, get $1 for each different gem you have. <-> Pretty weak. Requires buying too many expensive low-value gems before it becomes useful.
  
• Black Light: Your Black animals have +20. <-> Similar caveats to Double Moon, though you don't need many Black animals to make this souvenir useful in the early game.
  
• Snowcone Machine: Each day, get a random Snowcone. <-> Has a chance to generate uncommon Black Snowcones and rare Rainbow Snowcones. Also synergizes well with animals and souvenirs that care about eating snacks or changing color.
  
• Weekly Reward Card ($6): At the start of each week, gain a random souvenir. <-> Very weak. Only provides a bonus in the distant future; only becomes positive expected value once you gain a higher-rarity souvenir or multiple souvenirs; etc.

Conclusion

If you found this guide useful, I'd love to hear from you in the comments!

[mondsemmel]

@akidderz: I'm glad to hear that my guide seemed useful to you! The game got a big balance patch shortly after I played this game which made it easier by e.g. removing the black ant from the starter deck and buffing the sodas, so some parts of this guide are outdated, and I haven't had time to play the game since. When I do, I'll likely update the guide a bit.

[akidderz]

Appreciate you writing this. I do the daily run each day and win about 50% of the time. I've got a handful of effective strategies, but even now I'm discovering new ones. I think adding a section or expanding your "example archetypes" - would be helpful.