Snapshot:
Wildlife Photographer
Review

Snapshot: Wildlife Photographer (2021) is a push-your-luck game about a photographer looking for the perfect animal snaps. You play by revealing Animal cards, then assigning and rolling dice in order to successfully photograph them. It is a game about risking it all for that perfect photograph.

You play as a photographer trying to take photos to win the most prestige points and become the Wildlife Photographer of the Year. To do this you draw Animal cards and add them to one of four habitats. Squeeze more in for more potential points, but put in too many and they'll get spooked and run off.

To take your photos you have six dice. You first assign some to get into the habitat and the rest to take photos once you are there. So each turn becomes a choice on multiple levels. You need enough dice to get into a habitat, and then decide whether to ensure you capture a specific animal or spread yourself more thinly to capture multiple animals and risk failing completely.

Each animal captured adds to your total, with the more difficult to photograph being worth the most points. But you have to balance racing to complete sets of animals for maximum points, with your unique secret objective. The game ends when you reach a target number of photographs and the player with the most prestige points wins.

What starts out as a simple dice placement and rolling game, quickly evolved into a race for victory, where each go you have to decide how best to deploy your dice. Even when you make all the right decisions, luck might leave you lying in the bushes as the animal you were aiming to photograph rushes off into the jungle.

Our examiner, Rob Prior, first checked Snapshot: Wildlife Photographer 17 months ago. It was re-examined by Jo Robertson and updated 5 months ago.