I recently ran a few demos of Evolution at Cincinnati’s premiere gaming convention CincyCon. Luckily, I had participants ranging from 2 player games all the way to the max of 6, so I got the full breadth of the game as did a few people who checked it out more than once.
Evolution is a very well designed strategy game that uses hand management, resource management, randomness, and a delicious PVP system . The game starts off with a “species” board which is a generic unevolved species with a limited population, small stature and no particular evolutionary traits. You are dealt four cards and this is the bread and butter of game play. The cards that are dealt each have a “trait” (we liked to call them evolutionary traits or evolutions) that is played on the generic species granting it abilities to prosper. On the bottom of the cards is a number ranging from low negatives to as high as 7, this are to represent the food available each turn. At the beginning of each turn every player tosses one card into the center of the table face down, later those cards are revealed and totalled, that amount is the available food for the turn. The cards abilities don’t stop there, you can also discard cards to make you species bigger which allows it to avoid being attacked, have a greater population which acts as hit points and allows you to take more food, or even create a brand new species to evolve.
The win condition is simple, eat the most food, have the most species and the most evolutions. It seems simple but that is where the real strategy arises. You can only eat as much as your population and if somebody doesn’t eat, then they lose population, lose it all and lose the species. There is also the pesky trait called “Carnivore” which allows your species to eat other smaller species after the omnivores have eaten. It becomes a delicate balance of not over populating, having defensive traits, being big enough to not be attacked, picking the correct amount of food to toss into the communal pile and eating or not being eaten by the Carnivores that may be roaming the board. Carnivores may sound like apex predators and the win all end all of the game but they are very tricky to have out. If the carnivore can’t eat your opponents species, it has to eat yours and if it cannot do that then it can starve off and become extinct as well. One of my favorite aspects of the game was manipulating the food pool and watching multiple species starve off. It becomes a very balancing force to against someone who may have had taken an aggressive lead. Toss in a carnivore and you earn points as you take points away from your opponents.
The CincyCon experience was fantastic with the prototype of this game. Our games would start off small with 2-4 players and blossom into a 5 or 6 player game as people decided to stay and play again, trying out different strategies. With the eventual kickstarter, a majority of players were excited to back this product to get a copy in their hands to play at home. One of the common observations from the players is how the strategy behind this is simple to grasp but you have to be very fluid in playing it, that it bridges the gap between more complex strategy games and casual games. That comment is a lot of how I felt about playing and running the demos, it is an accessible game for a large audience and something you can pull out when cards against humanity has finally been worn out in with your casual gaming friends.
Ryan
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