Review | Evolution - Life... Um... Finds a Way
I didn’t have a PC until I was almost a teenager, and even then it wasn’t mine but the family’s computer. So, I never played a lot of PC franchises. Doom, Civ, Diablo - they were just never played in my house. However, the game I always looked longingly at online and at friends’ houses was Rollercoaster Tycoon. Instead, I played lots of Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis on my PS2. It was a serviceable Licensed Tycoon-like game that no one really remembers now. But that was all I had and I was happy with it.
*extremely gung-ho adventurer voice*: I AM BECOME AS GOD HO!
This dino-management is probably why the idea of Evolution, a board game about evolving a species and adapting to how other beings have developed, deeply appeals to me. While Evolution isn’t exactly what I wanted it to be, what it turned out to be is still fun. In Evolution, you’re tasked with evolving a species to become the dominant force at a watering hole with several other competitors. It’s a great idea, but I quickly learned that the game can rapidly snowball into an apex predator's delight if you play your cards right.
Evolution offers you a wide array of trait cards that you can use to modify the genes of your pack of animals. There are defensive traits, like Burrowing and Horns, and aggressive ones like Ambush and Carnivore. Each turn you’re dealt cards, but you can’t just pull a Jurassic Park and pump your species full of traits and call it a day. These cards have secondary uses, but ones that are no less important to your species survival. You use them to add food to the watering hole, increase your species’ body size and population, and make new species. Deciding what traits to sacrifice for the greater good and what ones to utilise for mutating your animal is where the bulk of the game’s strategising comes from, and it’s implemented perfectly.
FOOL YOU JUST SPUNG MY TRAP CARD!
YOU ARE NOW INFLICTED WITH THE THIRD NIPPLE TRAIT!
The game’s campaign serves to teach you about all these different cards and how they can be used in combination with one another by giving you access to a small pool of synergistic cards at each level. It’s a very effective way to learn how to play, and though no level ever took me more than two tries to beat, I often only won by a very tight margin, so I really felt like I was learning how to adapt and survive.
I was hoping my species would evolve in visually interesting ways as I added trait cards to them, but the only aesthetic distinction made is between carnivores and herbivores. This is a shame, as the art on each of the mutation cards looks gorgeous. To Evolution’s credit, there’s a great animation during an animals transformation from a plant-based to a more meaty diet, where the species will growl, rumble, and sprout claws - I just wish that kind of character and excitement were present for some if not all the traits.
1. Get a lion and a shark.
2. Light some candles and turn the romantic music.
3. CREATE AN UNSTOPABLE KILLING MACHINE!
My main issue with Evolution comes from how poor at evolving the AI seems to be. There are several boss species you encounter during the campaign, each meant to force you to utilise a specific tactic to survive. The problem is, these bosses draw from the same pool of cards that you have, rather than a tailored deck that fits their strategy. One species I found myself in competition with was set up to be a large carnivore, but as soon as I almost starved it into extinction the boss AI gave up on that strategy and only made herbivores. I was meant to be fighting an apex predator, but instead, we were fighting over plants. I’d much rather the boss had access to purely offensive traits, forcing me to play differently, but once I fended off the first major attack it was like playing any other opponent.
Overall, the AI opponents in Evolution don’t feel very reactive. The apex species give the illusion of strategy because they quickly back down from their initial game plan, but then they just default to what most other opponents do: Create as many herbivores as possible and try to eat as much as they can. There’s a near unbeatable card combo available to herbivores that ensures everyone stays fed, which is what the AI seems to lean towards. Because of this, carnivores are rarely played by opponents. However, that does mean if you’re able to make a big meat-eater yourself early on, chances are you’ll dominate the game.
Shady dude opening the breast of his big jacket: Heard you were looking for some extra gamemodes, huh?
Despite my issues with the AI, I still had a lot of fun with Evolution. There’s online play and local versus modes, so you can skip the campaign entirely and just play with friends and strangers, which definitely shakes up the predictable strategies of the computer. Also, hats off to developer North Star Digital Studios for making the cards so large and easy to read, even at a distance. It makes it feel more like an actual board game, and also meant I didn’t have to sit inches away from my TV to see what I was doing.
If you’re a fan of the board game Evolution is based on, or want an easy-to-learn-but-hard-to-master game to play with your friends and housemates, I’d definitely recommend Evolution. If you want a strategy game with a challenging campaign and brutal AI, best to give this one a miss.
