Northstar Game Studio Evolution Board Game | Create Species in This Strategy Game for Adults, Teens and Families | 2-6 Players, Age 12+

This is my new favorite game. It takes a bit to learn all the rules but once you've gotten them down it's challenging but not hard. I really enjoy the art style

Evolution (the game) manages to pull off what few modern games can. On the one hand, the engine and the basic rules of the game are fairly simple. Every action is based off playing the trait cards you have in hand. Play a card to put food in the water hole (everyone has to do this each turn); or play a card for its traits (the words); or play a card to gain a species; or play a card to grow your species. Then, you eat the food. The food you eat is your points. If you don't eat enough food, some of your population starves. Draw more cards. Rinse, repeat until the deck is dry. It was simple enough that when I played for the first time with my 6 and 8 year olds, who typically stink at action based games, both were doing just fine.But the traits themselves give an excellent level of complexity to the game. Once you start having multiple species who have evolved into carnivores, who have horns to defend against attacks, who can migrate and climb and hibernate, etc etc etc., the gameplay blossoms wonderfully. The choices you make on your turn become meaningful, which is precisely where you want to be in a game like this: you want your choices to matter, not the engine. Yet, because all the rules for each trait are on cards, everyone can see exactly what's going on. No one is unfairly surprised because the rules for "fatty tissue" is buried in the appendix. This also makes Evolution easy to teach."What does climbing do, dad?""What does the card say?""Oh, right. So you can't attack me! Ha!"I am very excited to get this to the table again. Far too often, modern games have complex rules to go with complex gameplay. To have a family-friendly, quasi-educational game like Evolution buck that trend is a great thing for families and groups who enjoy light to medium games.Note that we played without the climate rules, as suggested by the developer. They will certainly make the game more complex, as you are worried not only about being eaten by your kids' carnivores but the risk of hypothermia, heat exhaustion, and volcanic eruption. I will bring these rules out after 4 or 5 playthroughs, I imagine. For more advanced gamers, they seem absolutely great and a lot of fun. I'd use them as soon as you have a handle on the base strategies.

Amazing game, loads of fun! A game you can actually play with a wide variety and # of players which is rare. First opening the box and looking at all the pieces and the manual you think it is complicated, too complicated. However, once you play it once you quickly get the hang of the concepts and strategy. I suggest you use YouTube video tutorials as an introduction to new players rather than reading the manual; it goes much faster and as long as one person knows the messy details you can bring them up when needed. I also suggest that you use the alternative fast play style for all #s of players rather than just the 5-6 players as suggested. It makes a big improvement in the flow of gameplay leaving each player with less downtime and feels more like a video game where everyone is playing at once together rather than waiting a turn.The artwork is gorgeous, the materials feel high quality. The Climate part can be left out if you want to simplify things. I worried for a first play through with non-serious gamer friends that the Climate part would be too complicated, but they insisted and it actually turned out great! Climate definitely adds interesting effects and strategies, and it might even be a way you can turn some people around to understanding climate change without actually debating and throwing science at them! The game overall certainly pulls in all aspects of evolution, but never once explicitly throws in science. Survival of the fittest at its best!

Overall I love this game. I had a board game night coming up so I pick up evolution. It was super easy to teach and after about 15-20 min we were off and running. I played several games with 5-6 players and it was a great time. Now here comes the but ... the entire time I felt like it needed something like a bit of polish. I liked the game play and making your own species is super cool and hit that nerdy itch. I just couldnt shake the felling like was missing something. So I did some digging and found it is offered on SOME mobile devices and steam. On mobile if available its free and on steam its like $15. So I hedged my bets and bought the steam version because my phone was not compatible. And oh boy I was not disappointed the steam version allows you to do a campaign that varied the theme and gives you a varied difficulty AI to play against. Then my Gf got on her phone and downloaded the free version..... and was able to play with and against me on my steam version. This irritated me a bit at this point I had bought the board game and steam version to then see it could be free. All you would need is internet and your phone and 4 friends(4 is the limit online) could play for free. That being said I am not regretting my purchases and have looked into the expansions (which arent available on the digital version).I can easily recommend this game. I would say if youre on the fence or dont plan on playing with more than 4 people check if its available on you phone. Give it a spin and see what you think. Then see if you want the physicalversion.I am not bashing this game its great and I will continue to play both versions.In Summary -The digital versionOn the phone is free and on steam is $15.These are cross compatible and can play with each other .The limit is 4 players.There are new cards to purchase through the digital versionCampaign and AI to play againThe Physical Board2-6 playerstwo expansions