Evolution Review – Playing God in a Cardboard Ecosystem

The only goal in Evolution is to live and to live well. In this day and age, even that’s a struggle, but what about a million years ago? When we were still using flip phones, and wearing trench coats. Just kidding, those times only feel like a million years ago.

But if we go back to when only creatures roamed the earth, their survival was based on one thing: access to food.

In Evolution, you’re going to simulate what it was like living in those days. As you create creatures, give them traits, and see if they can survive living on what meagre food is available.

Turns play semi-synchronously, at the start of the round everyone places a face-down card in the watering hole. These will be revealed later to determine how many juicy, flavourful cardboard food tokens are available.

But for now, they’re cards you’d rather not give up.

All of the remaining cards in your hand are creature traits that attach to your creatures to give them abilities like eating two foods at once or changing them into a carnivore. Interestingly these traits are all grounded in science with some liberties taken for the sake of gameplay. You still get an appreciation for the trait and how it would apply to an animal in real life.

After everyone’s had a turn applying traits to their species, food is handed out to each creature and any traits are activated.

At the end of the game, whoever has the most food wins and their species gets to live long enough to see the asteroid hit.

Making Ecosystems

Evolution is a game where you’re given a lot of options but never really feel in control.

For example, you’ll give your species distinct traits like the ability to climb, give them long necks, or just make them extraordinarily fat. Alternatively, you can discard these traits to create additional species, make your species bigger, or increase their population.

However, despite all of these options, the only thing you’ll be doing in Evolution is reacting to the ecosystem. At a simple level, if someone makes a carnivore at the table, then you need to ensure your creatures can protect themselves. Or if someone makes a herbivore that can eat two foods per turn, then you need to ensure your creatures can eat three foods per turn.

Evolution, like in real life, is about changing your creatures so they can thrive within the environment created. Meaning that while there are strategies, they’re not long-term. And for the most part, you’ll be a leaf on a stream, being bullied by the current.

The way the creatures within the game grow and adapt throughout based on changing circumstances, makes for a great teaching aid about evolution.

Although, I flip-flop between thinking I have enough agency to feel satisfied, and I don’t have enough agency to control the outcome of the game. At times, it feels like you’re at the whims of the ecosystem, and card draw, rather than player skill.

Fascinating Study on Systems

With all that said, being a part of, and being able to influence the ecosystem is intensely interesting. Whereby you add a trait to a creature, see all the other players react to it, and build around it.

You’ll find yourself donning a lab coat and experimenting with the ecosystem to see what happens when you add different elements.

For instance, if all of a sudden I stop putting food in the watering hole, what’s going to happen? Which creatures are going to benefit? Performing these experiments and seeing the simulation play out in real time, is when the Evolution turns into something special.

This sounds like an oxymoron, where in one breath I’m saying you have a lot of impact on the ecosystem, then in the next, I’m calling you a leaf.

And it might be.

But in taking a step back you’ll notice you’re not the only one at the table, and while you have a large impact on this communal system. So does everyone else.

Dave’s Hot Take

The use of watercolour for the art gives Evolution a unique look, and the pictures of the animals are a treat. It was a mistake giving each card a border also done in watercolour. It’s too much. It’s overpowering and bleeds into the card artwork.

I’m glad this has been remedied in the follow-up games Evolution Climate, and Oceans.

In summation, in 2014, Evolution would have been a stellar game, one of the best of that year. It’s a scientifically accurate system and a wholly novel concept for board games. However, as a perhaps too serious board gamer, Evolution left me wanting more. More decisions, and more control.

Still, in a world plagued with anti-intelligence and anti-science, games like Evolution are needed to push us and more importantly, our children in the right direction. And for that, I applaud anyone and everyone involved in the making of this game.