Evolution - review of the board game. Evolution (board game) Additions and editions

Game description

Since September 2015, the rules of the new edition of "Evolution" include an addition - the scenario "Evolution. Cataclysm", developed with the participation of the game masters. You can familiarize yourself with the new version of the rules on our website.

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You can leave your review (liked/disliked and why) just below in the Reviews and comments section, and ask questions about the rules and just talk about the game, we invite you to the Forum »

Video review of the board game Evolution from Igroveda!

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Reviews and comments (296)

That is, did I understand correctly that having initially laid out animals A and B, I can put animal B between them and connect, for example, A and B through cooperation?

Answer from the Igroved store: Natalia, yes, that’s right.

Review |

Natalia |

Answer from the Igroved store: 05/26/2019
Good afternoon. A little confused in interpreting the rules. 1. Did I understand correctly that new animals can only be posted as they appear? Or can they be laid out before or between existing ones? 2. Is the player obliged to feed his animals in the order in which they appear during the feeding phase or can he choose any order?
Natalya, good afternoon.

1. If you mean the location of the animals on the gaming table, then it does not matter - you can lay them out as convenient. 2. You can feed the animals in any order. | 25.04.2019

Review |

Answer from the Igroved store: Anastasia, Chernyakhovsk

Hello, is it possible to use all the add-ons for the base game? If not, what is the maximum? Are there separate rules for such a game?

Anastasia, hello. We believe it is possible. At the end of the rules for add-ons there are clarifications on how to combine them with other add-ons.

Answer from the Igroved store: Review |

Denis, Moscow |

Answer from the Igroved store: 10/28/2018
Hello. Is this the 3rd edition of the game?
Hello, Denis. We present a game with rules version 1.4.1 (2015). Unfortunately, we cannot tell you which edition of the game this is.
Review |

Rostislav |

Hello! The following kind of question: There is animal A and animal B. Between them is the Symbiosis card (animal A is a symbiont). Animal A has the “Burning” property and is fed, therefore cannot be attacked by a predator. The enemy attacks creature B, the attack is redirected to creature A, but since it is Burrowed and fed, the predator cannot attack it. It turns out Animal A and B are invulnerable and unkillable. Explain this situation!

Answer from the Igroved store: 10/28/2018
This situation may well exist. One of the animals is protected from attacks by the “Symbiosis” property, and the second by the “Normal” property. The only thing you will need to make sure is that they are both fed.

Review |

Roman |

Answer from the Igroved store: 09/05/2018

Sorry, I was wrong. I meant that during the feeding phase one player did not feed his animals on his turn, but all the other animals were fed. Can this player attack until he has fed all his animals?
Roman, during the feeding phase on your turn, you take a piece from the food supply or attack with one predator. Yes, you can attack with all of your predators in turn, but only once with each.
Hello! But what about the answer to Oleg from 01/30/2016: the opponent can redirect to the second creature and the symbiont will not work for the reason that we ourselves do not have the right to attack that creature, but if it has no value for the opponent, he, due to the property of mimicry, can redirect attack him. Based on these considerations, if the second creature has no value, then it is possible to mimic it, and the symbiote has the right to eat it. Where is the truth?
Overall, the game is wonderful! I REALLY like it! It’s impossible to tear yourself away! If there is no one with me, I play with myself: for myself and “for that guy”))

IMHO about the cards: if the player has 0 animals, but there are cards in his hand, he takes not 0+1, but gets to 6.

Regarding the stomper in hibernation: since the red chips represent plant food (apples, mushrooms, berries), apparently the stomper, when sleeping, tosses and turns from side to side))
Board game

Number of players
From 2 to 4

Party time
30 to 90 minutes

Game difficulty

Complex

There is a wonderful board game that is based on Darwin's theory. The entertainment is called “Evolution” and is one of the “right games”. It was developed in 2010 by the famous Dmitry Knorre, Candidate of Biological Sciences.

Purpose of the game

The game is divided into steps that last until the main deck runs out of cards. With each step, players acquire cards, and with them the opportunity to add new qualities to their animals or create new animals. The number of cards depends on the presence of animals in the players. The number of food chips depends on the result of the dice roll and the presence of players. At the time of the next phase, the game participants take turns performing actions with one of their animals. They can either take “food” or attack another animal, thereby, if successful, increasing their supply. After this stage, all hungry animals die.

Getting ready for fun

To begin, the cards are shuffled. Each participant in the game receives six cards. The smallest player is then selected.
Sequence of moves
Each turn is one year, which is divided into four phases:
1. development;
2. establishing a food supply;
3. nutrition;
4. extinction and acquisition of new chips.
At each stage of the game, participants take turns clockwise. When for some reason the players cannot or do not want to move, the phase comes to an end.

Phase 1 – development

During the development phase, participants have the opportunity to place the cards they have in their hands on the table. This phase consists of several circles.
Players place one card at a time on the table, passing the right to move clockwise.
Any card can be played either as a property or as an animal, depending on this, it goes on the table either as a property or face down. In the case when a piece is played as a property, it is placed under the piece of the played animal.
There are cards that contain 2 properties, but at the time of laying out only 1 is used, and it cannot be changed in the future.
One animal cannot have 2 identical properties, except for the “fat reserve” property.
Paired cards are placed between the animals on which they were played. One animal can have several paired identical properties in different animals.
In turn, an animal can have several paired different properties with one other animal.
When a player in the game does not want to introduce a new animal or add properties, he says the word “pass” and thus in this phase he loses the opportunity to lay out chips.
Accordingly, a participant can play any number of cards from his hand. When a player has no chips left in his hand, he says “pass”. The phase lasts until all players say “pass”.

Phase 2 – establishing the food supply

In this phase, the size of the food supply is calculated using the following formula:

2 participants - result of rolling 1 dice + 2
3 participants - result of rolling 2 dice
4 participants - total of 2 dice + 2
When playing with 2 sets or 1 set and the first expansion:
5 participants - total of 3 dice + 2
6 participants - total of 3 dice + 4
While playing with 2 sets:
7 participants - total of 4 dice + 2
8 participants - total of 4 dice + 4

The first participant rolls the dice. Afterwards the required number of red food chips are laid out on the table.

Disagreements in controversial issues when explaining the rules are resolved by carefully reading the instructions for this entertainment. There is an official FAQ with the most common questions and answers. The rules have been edited with the release of new versions. “House rules” differ from the author’s.

Basic game package

84 cards
20 food chips
2 cubes
rules of the game

Additions to the board game Evolution

Evolution. Random mutation

The third addition, released in 2013. This game is not an add-on, but is considered a separate game.

Evolution. Plants

This is the third addition that was released in 2016. Here, dice rolls are completely eliminated and a new food supply system is introduced (you can directly influence its availability and size). All plants are available to all participants and everyone can influence their evolution, also adding properties to them.

"is an exciting adventure and an entertaining lesson in biology. Lay out bright cards and chips on the table and you will understand by what laws life on Earth develops!

Complex

Form the most developed and numerous population of living beings and score more points than other participants.

Game description

The game uses a deck of 84 cards, 25 colored food tiles, and two dice. “Evolution” is designed for participants over 12 years old and lasts from 30 to 60 minutes. It involves from 2 to 4 players when using one deck of cards and up to 8 when connecting two decks.

In the process, participants combine the properties of living organisms, regulate their numbers and obtain new useful characteristics. The player strives for the population to survive and take a dominant position by the end. The game consists of 10-15 rounds or moves until the cards in the deck run out.

Preparing for the game

The deck is shuffled and each player receives 6 cards. Then the player who goes first is chosen by rolling the dice.

Progress of the game

Each round consists of several phases: development, determining the food supply, feeding and extinction. Players walk one at a time, one after another, clockwise.

If desired, the participant can play his card or skip a turn. When no one at the table is able or willing to act anymore, the phase is considered over.

Development . During the first phase, everyone places cards on the table one at a time.

The picture is placed face down or face down. In the first case, it reveals some property, in the second, it denotes an animal. The property card is placed under the animal for which it is played.

The properties “Cooperation”, “Symbiosis” and “Interaction” must be played on two individuals at once, that is, these properties are paired.

Some cards have two characteristics indicated, but only one will play, and you cannot change it during the game. One animal cannot have two identical properties, with the exception of “Fat reserve”.

When a player no longer wants to create a new animal and does not want to add distinctive features to it, he passes and does not play any more cards. The participant is also required to say “pass” if there are no more cards in his hand. A phase is considered completed when no participant can make a move.

Determination of food supply . The available food depends on the roll of the dice and the number of players taking part in the party. The resulting food supply constitutes the food supply for this turn.

If two people are playing, 2 is added to the value rolled on the dice. When playing with three people, two dice are thrown and the resulting numbers are added up. For four players, add 2 to the sum of the numbers on the two dice. Then the required number of red chips are placed in the center of the table.

Nutrition . The next phase consists of several circles. Players take turns taking one red chip and placing it on one of their animals.

By default, each animal has one unit of satiety, so it only needs one token to “get enough.”

Each new property of a creature requires additional food.

When it is the participant’s turn to take the chip, and his animal has already been fed, he can put a square on the “Fat reserve” parameter.

If you are the owner of the “Predator”, then you have the right not to take a food chip, but to attack unprotected individuals on the table.

This could be an animal belonging to another player, your own, or another “Predator”. After the attack, the prey is considered destroyed, and the carnivorous creature receives two blue chips from the food supply.

The phase ends when all the animals are fed and their fat reserves are replenished, when there are no chips left in the food supply, or when all players pass.

Extinction . Living organisms that do not have food tokens die out, that is, they are discarded along with all their properties. After this, players are dealt as many cards as they have left animals plus one card on top. If the unfortunate selector has no survivors, he receives six cards. Then all food tokens, except for the “Fat Reserve”, are removed from the animals, and the next player begins a new round of the game.

End of the game

The last round occurs when the deck runs out of all cards. Upon completion, points are tallied. The player is awarded two points for each surviving animal and one for each property. Additional points indicated on the cards with properties are added to the amount. The winner is the one with the highest result.

(Editor’s note: Here is a translation of the article “Dale Yu: Review of Evolution (NorthStar Games)”, published on May 20, 2015 on opinionatedgamers.com.)

Developers: Dominique Crapuchette, Dmitry Knorre, Sergey Machin

Publisher: NorthStar Games

Number of players: 2-6

Age: from 10 years

Duration: 60 minutes

Number of games played: 10, game for review provided by NorthStar Games

I first wrote about “Evolution” in 2011, it was the very first version of the game, published by the Russian publishing house “Right Games”. Soon the publisher sold the rights abroad, and they were acquired by NorthStar Games. After that, Dominique Crapuchette did a tremendous job of refining the game, and for that I take my hat off to him. Dominic made a lot of drastic changes, enough, in my opinion, to consider the final result a completely different game compared to the original. A few months ago I wrote a new review of Evolution, a review of the remastered version of the game. And this, it turns out, is already the third review, in it we will talk about the updated edition of the game.

New illustration on the box

2014 edition box

In Evolution, you create and develop individuals, trying to ensure that each round they not only survive, but also thrive. The game simulates the mechanisms of evolution, thanks to which animals changed and adapted to new environmental conditions. This is a card game, it contains 129 property cards. Each participant starts the game with one individual. An individual is a wooden field with two counters: one is responsible for the size of the individual, the other is responsible for the size of its population.

Two fields of individuals and cards above them

At the beginning of each round, players take 3 cards from the deck, and 1 additional card is brought to the player for each individual field he has. If the deck runs out, a new deck is made from the discard pile, so there are enough cards for everyone, but the round in which this happened becomes the last one.

Having received cards, players lay out one card face down in front of them, these laid out cards will determine the food supply of the current round (a certain amount of food is indicated in the lower right corner of each property card) and will be used in the feeding phase. In the meantime, the participants are waiting for the card drawing phase.

Starting with the starting player and going clockwise, each player plays as many attribute cards from their hand as they want.

Property cards can be played on your own individuals; in this case, the cards are laid out face down just above the selected individuals. There is a limitation: one individual cannot have more than 3 properties. Also, you cannot play on an individual a property that it already has.

Some ability cards to help you eat more efficiently

Trait cards can be discarded to create new individuals. In this case, a new field of individuals is taken from the stock and placed to the right or left of the existing individuals (but never between them), wooden markers are placed on the first divisions of the individual and population size counter.

Finally, ability cards can be discarded to increase the size or population of one individual by 1. You cannot increase any of these characteristics beyond 6 - the individual's field has no other holes.

Players are free to discard/play any number of cards. All unspent cards remain in your hand and can be used in subsequent rounds. After the first player has discarded/played all the desired cards, the next player in turn does the same, and so on. At the end of the phase, players turn over all ability cards played on individuals.

Then the feeding phase begins. Players open the cards laid out at the beginning of the round, add up the amounts of food indicated on them and place the corresponding number of food markers on the watering hole field - this is the food supply for the current round. First, food is received by individuals with the property of effective nutrition (determined by the black piece of paper in the upper right corner of the map), then the stage of “normal” nutrition begins.

Updated food field

Forage field for previous edition

Starting with the first player, each player takes turns feeding ONE of their hungry individuals. An individual is considered hungry if there are fewer food tokens on its board than its population size. There are 2 types of individuals in the game: herbivores and predators - each type has its own feeding rules.

Herbivores simply consume food from the food supply. Typically, you take 1 food token from the pond at a time and place it on the hungry individual's board - on the leftmost empty circle above the population markers. An individual cannot eat more than its population size. Some properties of individuals affect the number of food tokens, some allow you to feed neighboring individuals as well.

Predators prefer to eat meat - the meat of other individuals. A predator can attack any individual in the game, even if it belongs to the owner of this predator. A predator is obliged to attack and eat other individuals if it is able to do so, and it can attack only if its size is larger than the size of the potential prey and this prey does not have protective properties that would allow it not to become the prey of a predator. If the attack is successful, the predator takes as many food tokens from the supply as the size of the prey, and the prey reduces the population size by 1. If the population is reduced to 0, the individual ceases to exist: its field and ability cards are discarded. In this case, the owner of the extinct individual receives compensation: he takes as many new cards from the deck as the number of property cards the individual had at the time of its death.

Some "predatory" cards

The feeding phase ends either when all individuals are full (their number of food tokens becomes equal to their populations), or when hungry individuals have no opportunity to eat. If an individual remains hungry, its population is reduced by 1 for each food token missing. Accordingly, if an individual was unable to eat at all, its population drops to 0 and it ceases to exist. Its field and properties are reset, and its owner receives a new card for each reset property. Players then put any food tokens collected in the current round into their bags. If a player has no living individuals left, he takes a new individual field from the supply. At the end of the round, the next player in clockwise order becomes the first player.

As already mentioned, the game ends after a round in which, in the card receiving phase, players were forced to renew the finished deck. Players count victory points. Points are awarded for three things:

Each food token in the player's bag is worth 1 point.

The player receives as many points as the population size of his surviving individuals.

The player receives as many points as the number of properties his individuals have.

In the event of a tie, the challenger with the most attribute cards wins.

My thoughts on the game

First of all, it must be said that compared to the original version, this new version plays much better - from start to finish. If I had to choose between the two versions, I would choose the NorthStar edition 9 times out of 10. The biggest difference is when it comes to scoring points, in the Proper Games version you only earned points at the end of the game, getting 1 point per individual and card properties of the individual. Nothing else mattered. The game ended up being a 30-40 build up with the hope of getting lucky in the final round. In the new version, points are awarded from the very beginning, and, in my opinion, this is a very important improvement. However, I believe that most of you have never even seen the Correct Games version of Evolution, so all remaining comments will refer to the new version of the game.

Cute fabric bags for storing eaten food

Evolution is a well-crafted game aimed at the average Eurogamer. I don't mean this in a bad way, it's just the nature of NorthStar. I have spoken with Dom and Satish from NorthStar on several occasions and know that they are trying to produce games that are accessible to the “general public”. The company's previous games, such as Wits and Wagers, have made the leap to the mainstream, but at the same time the company is trying to appeal to more advanced gamers. NorthStar is going to support sales of "Evolution" with a series of tournaments and will even try to include it in the list of games "WBC" ("World Boardgaming Championships" - "International Board Games Championship", an annual American convention. - Approx. Per.), but I'm not sure they will succeed.

The core of Evolution is managing combinations of different skills and strategically planning the best time to play cards. You have to constantly monitor rival individuals to calculate which properties will be most valuable at any given time, and this relative value of properties will change steadily as individuals evolve.

Each round you need to decide how to best use the cards you have. You can spend them on a limited number of individuals, trying to make them as strong and successful as possible. Or you can spend cards to acquire new individuals - they can easily become a snack for predators, but if they survive, then each round you will receive more cards, and perhaps someday they will turn into strong and successful individuals.

It feels like the trait cards are well balanced, you won't find a trait that is too powerful compared to the others. And depending on other properties played, each property shows itself differently - just like in real life.

Some defensive cards

Another decision you have to make is at what point to turn an individual into a predator (and whether to do it). This transformation is done by playing the “Predator” property card. The predator is no longer tied to food tokens from the pond, but you must be sure that he will not be left without food.

The game has very nice graphics, the illustrations on the cards are especially good. Some maps have been redrawn compared to the previous version. Also in the previous version there was an extremely awkward pond where it was difficult to distinguish food tokens, and this was probably the only flaw in the graphic design of the 2014 version. To eliminate it, in our first games we simply did not take out this reservoir field, but laid out the tokens directly on the table. Now there is a new body of water in the game with a less colorful design, and food tokens are clearly visible on it.

The wooden fields of specimens add a special charm to the game... and weight. I'm not sure they're significantly more expensive than regular cardboard boards, but they're nice to hold and play with anyway, so no complaints there.

Checklist describing various properties

Overall, I'd say the game's strategy is somewhere around average, perhaps even a little below average, but again, that's what you'd expect from a game aimed at the masses. Of course, the game is more complex than what Monopoly fans are used to playing, but for those who are looking for something different, it can be a great entry point into the world of games that exist beyond the "throw and pull" game. I was pleasantly surprised by the depth of the game, and I didn't get bored with it even after 10 games. My two sons also liked it (that's why I played as many as 10 games).

Thoughts from other "grumpy players" (about the 2014 version)

Greg Schloesser. This remade, updated Evolution is without a doubt much better than its predecessor. In the original game, individuals appeared as quickly as they disappeared, since there was no mechanism for increasing their population. You were attacked - you were killed. In the new version, the world has become a more stable place. Also, in the original game, victory points were earned only in the last round, and everything that happened before that was a kind of preparatory stage. The game was much more chaotic, but this uncontrollability of the twists of fate could have been less noticeable if points had been scored more often. In the new version, players receive points every time they eat food, and the lifespan of individuals is incomparably longer.

The components and artwork have undergone a dramatic change. The illustrations are beyond praise. Tokens, fields of individuals and cloth bags for storing eaten food are all of very good quality.

The gameplay is smooth and the game itself is quite fun. However, there are also some problems. There's too much food. In the original game, the amount of food was determined by rolling dice, that is, each time it was completely random, unpredictable and excluded the possibility of planning. The revised method of determining food supplies, in which players lay out the map, is much more interesting, but only works in theory, and in practice there is an abundance of food. It will become scarce only if each player plays a small card, and for this, individual players must find alternative or more satisfying ways to feed themselves (which may only happen towards the end of the game, or may not happen at all). Everyone wants their species to survive, so everyone usually puts down a card that gives a lot of food. Of course, it would be possible to raise a herd of predators, this would make it possible to sabotage contributions to the common feeding trough, but usually finding food for predators is not so easy due to the protective properties that other individuals have developed. In other words, betting on predators is quite risky.

Another problem is the quick ending of the game. Just when you think you've put together the perfect combination of complementary properties, that's when the deck runs out. In a game with 5-6 players this happens too quickly, so it turns out that it is better to play with three or four players. In general, this is a rather unusual situation when the duration of the game decreases as the number of participants increases. A larger deck, or at least the ability to play a regular deck a second time, would give players more time to evolve individuals.

But with all this, of course, one cannot fail to note the enormous merit of NorthStar Games in the fact that they took a game that was not devoid of good ideas, but a crude one, and significantly improved it. The new version is more balanced and less random. It's definitely a game that most families can spend time with, although if you're playing with kids, predator attacks might offend them. As for seasoned veterans, they should enjoy the game, but I'm afraid they will have the same complaints as I do. It would be great if the publisher added one or more solutions to the game that would make food a scarcer resource and extend the party time. With these changes as options, the game would be for the widest range of players, which is always a good thing. As if to live up to its name and theme, Evolution could continue to evolve further - in the form of additions.

Mitchell Thomashow. This is one of the few new games I've played. I'm always extremely interested in games with the theme of evolution and ecology, so I was glad to see the opportunity. However, the game disappointed me. We played six times together. In our opinion, there is little diversity in it, and the change in environmental factors is not shown clearly enough. The latter could be overlooked if the educational side of the game was completely overshadowed by the addictive gameplay. But playing Evolution is boring and monotonous. Perhaps it is more dynamic in a company with a larger number of players. I agree with Greg that expansions and more interesting and varied maps could help solve the problems he voiced.

To my surprise, I did not find a review of the game “Evolution” either in the guide or in the posts since the last update of the guide, although a fair amount of time has passed since its release. Meanwhile, the game has received a couple of additions and is sold in almost any board game store. Let's try to figure out why.

Not that "Evolution" immediately attracted attention. The box has a discreet design that completely matches the design of the game itself. It doesn't look very secure - the cardboard is quite flimsy, so handle it with care. Inside the box you can find rules, a promotional brochure, dice, food tokens and, in fact, game cards.

They are actually made in one or two colors of varying degrees of intensity, the cover is a pleasant green shade. The game side is predominantly the same color, but there are red, yellow, purple and blue elements. The game was invented by a Russian biologist, which gave it a certain specific taste of academicism and... biologicality? One of the goals of the game can be considered to popularize the logic of evolutionary selection.