First Impressions of Evolution

Our second first impressions article. Take this as an indication of how the game feels, but remember it is far from a full review!

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On Monday night, I had a delightful time eating my friends’ animals! No, not their pets. You see, we were playing Evolution.

Evolution sees you being in charge of the development and survival of a number of species of animal. You’ll give these animals traits, beautifully illustrated cards, like climbing skills or burrowing to help them avoid predators, or you’ll increase their population so that you can gather more food (which count as victory points) each turn, but make sure you can gather enough to feed them all or they’ll starve… like my rather too fertile mammals.

Fortunately, there is a way around the challenges of the limited food at the watering hole… by going carnivore! Takes a fair bit of investment to pull off, as you need a larger body size than your intended prey, plus you need to find a way around all their defensive traits. But fortunately my gigantic, intelligent killing machine could figure out a way to eat pretty much whatever I liked! There were some very tender tree climbers I wiped out… an upstart carnivore species impinging on my (surf &) turf, and an array of foraging morsels to pick at. Truly delightful to be king of the jungle!

It is really interesting to see the combos that come out of the different traits. My scavenging carnivore could fill up on food with a minimum of fuss, essential for coping with all the defences my opponents were rapidly evolving (for some reason…). But there is another layer of combo, between different species you are developing, like cooperative animals who gather food for your other animals at the same time. And then other, ecology level interactions, such as the aforementioned defence traits that appear in response to meat eaters. Like Charlie’s giant, fat tree climbers. It’s just great to watch your group’s ecosystem develop!

All this wrapped in the most gorgeous artwork and with an amazing dinosaur shaped first player marker. You will end up with some strange looking animals in this game, but I can’t wait to find new exciting combos, however the resulting animals look!