Tho' the Evolution board game traces its genesis to a low-budget Russian game published by Rightgames, it's the reinvention of the game by Dominic Crapuchettes and North Star Games that made Evolution a modern board game classic. North Star first published their iteration of Evolution in 2014, and since that time there have been several expansions. In addition, North Star developed Oceans, which was a standalone game based on similar mechanics. Nature is a further evolution of the original game. If you thought of Oceans as Evolution 2.0 then Nature is Evolution 3.0, and it's coming to Kickstarter on 17 September...
The mechanics in Nature are similar to Evolution and Oceans in that players are using cards to adapt, evolve and grow their species in order to make the most of the available food. Everyone starts with one species and they add a new species in each of the four rounds. Species all start off small and herbivorous but they can grow in physical size as well as increasing in population. Initially, with players having just one species each, there is likely to be ample food but competition for food becomes more intense as players add more species each round and as they increase their population size. And as competition for food intensifies, players may modify their species to make them carnivorous so that they become predators gorging on other species rather than foraging for vegetation. Likewise, players may add defensive traits that protect them from predation. The food that species consume gets added to players' bags, where it is converted to victory points at the end of the game.
As with Evolution, all this is card driven but, like those evolving species, Dominic Crapuchettes has learned from earlier implementations. Cards are multi-use. You can use them obviously as the indicated traits: you play them initially face down so that other players don't know what traits you're adding that round until the simultaneous reveal. The traits are stackable in that you can add the same trait to a species twice to double its effect - albeit that that's still subject to the limit on the total number of traits that any one species can have. Alternatively, you can discard a card to grow a species or to increase population. The cards feel more streamlined but we especially like the wooden tokens used in Nature to represent each species. These too are designed to stack so that when you increase the size of a species you physically increase the size of the stack. You can also see at a glance which species are carnivorous because the wooden tokens are double sided so you can just flip a token to its red side to signify that your species is red in tooth and claw...
The big USP for Nature is that North Star have designed it to be highly modular. The basic game has only a handful of different trait cards but you can up the ante by introducing the various modules, either individually or in combination. The core game comes with five of these in-built 'expansions' - Flight, Rainforest, Tundra, Natural Disasters and Jurassic (yes - you can play with dinosaurs) - but the plan from North Star Games is for two more modules to be released every year for the next decade! By the time we get to the 2030s, buying in those additional modules will seem like second nature :-)
Nature is the natural evolution of the Evolution games, and it builds on the experience of those earlier iterations. It plays notably more quickly than Evolution because it's played over a very finite four rounds, or six if you're playing with additional modules. By comparison, Evolution continues until the deck runs dry. You're less dependent too on the luck of the draw: Evolution can be quite punishing because players need specific trait cards before their species can become predators but that's not the case in Nature because the predator trait is always freely available.
Nature incorporates a strong element of deduction and bluffing ahead of those all-important simultaneous trait reveals. It simulates what Darwin described as the survival of the fittest, so you shouldn't be surprised to find it's a highly competitive 'take that' game. Shown here on Board's Eye View is a preview prototype produced by North Star ahead of the Kickstarter launch. It gives a taster of the beautiful artwork from Catherine Hamilton and North Star's high production values. Click here to find out more.