Developer: North Star Digital Studios
Publisher: North Star Games
Platform: Switch, PC, Android, iOS
Tested on: Switch
Evolution Board Game – Review
North Star Games’ board game Evolution might not be as familiar to a mainstream audience as classics like Monopoly or Uno, but it’s still a popular choice among board game aficionados. Not only that, but the game has gone on to win several awards and is even used as an educational tool these days. It’s only a small step for such a lauded and beloved game to make the jump to a digital version, and after a successful Kickstarter campaign, Evolution became available through Steam and on mobile devices. The Switch port now joins that lineup, but how has Evolution survived the transformation from a board game into a digital game?
Story
As Evolution is a board game first and foremost, there isn’t a real story to speak of. The tutorial does attempt to immerse the player in the setting by adding a short blurb about scientists on an expedition but this feature doesn’t quite carry on beyond the introductory games, so there isn’t a whole lot to say about it.
Graphics
The original board of Evolution features absolutely gorgeous watercolour art, which has been faithfully recreated for this digital version. The colourful illustrations are one of Evolution’s main draws and feature animals that look familiar at first glance but when you look closer, you’ll notice that these aren’t the exact same creatures as those that populate our Earth. As the species you create yourself are never rendered visually in the game, the drawings really help immerse you into the world Evolution attempts to create. Juxtaposed against these beautiful images, however, are some newer designs of scientists that guide you through the game’s tutorial. While the drawings of the scientists are decent in their own right, the clash between the carefully crafted watercolour designs and the cartoonish scientist is jarring and we would actually have preferred if the addition had been left out altogether.
Sound
Unlike the aforementioned scientist art, adding a soundtrack to Evolution proved to be a good idea. The music featured here adds a level of immersion and is very reminiscent of the soundtrack you’d expect to hear in a nature documentary. The music never overpowers the gameplay and the audio quality is crisp, both for music and sound effects. There isn’t any voice acting present, but given the limited amount of appropriate dialogue for that, this isn’t a huge miss.
Gameplay
In Evolution, players use cards and tokens to bring new species to life and make them survive long enough so that they can become the dominant species around the watering hole. They must also attempt to prevent their opponents from doing the same. It’s a fantastic, albeit simplified, depiction of the concept of survival of the fittest. In order for a species to survive, they’ll need to gather enough food from the watering hole. Food is generated by players giving up trait cards -more on those later- with better trait cards generally providing a greater amount of food. The amount of food is one of the most important factors in the game: if there isn’t enough food for everyone, then species that weren’t able to get what they needed will see their population decrease. Should a species’ population count reach zero, it’s game over for them and they’ll go extinct.
The best strategy is to generate enough food for your own species to survive and use the aforementioned trait cards to ensure you can grab enough for yourself while denying your opponents what they need. This involves planning ahead and creating synergy between your species’ traits. Traits are cards that are played on species to give them unique abilities. If a species gains the foraging trait, for example, they’ll be able to take more food from the watering hole. Likewise, there are cards that allow you to take food first, or that will let other species take food whenever one of your creatures grabs their portion.
The key here is to break the turn sequence in order to gobble up as much as possible. This is easier said than done as your opponents have a similar toolbox than you of course. A typical game of Evolution therefore revolves around carefully balancing your traits, the available food and your species’ population as well as their size. In this context, size is literally what it says on the box: how large an animal is. This is an important factor whenever carnivores enter play. The carnivore trait allows a species to attack and eat an opponent’s species but only if the targeted prey is smaller than the carnivore itself. There are of course trait cards that prevent carnivores from being able to target your creatures. Life always finds a way.
A round of Evolution never feels repetitive thanks to the addition of promotional cards. When you start a new game, a random selection of promo cards is added to the standard deck, meaning there is always an element of surprise present. New strategies open up as some of these promo cards can change the flow of the game or introduce different combos. The game’s single-player campaign features 24 different scenarios that put a slight twist on the standard formula, although as with most digital board games, the core experience lies in playing with other people. This can be done both locally and online.
Overall, the digital version of Evolution is a faithful recreation of the original board game and it accurately showcases the strategic gameplay that made the original a hit among board game enthusiasts. That’s not to say that Evolution’s digital incarnation is fantastic as there are a few flaws that we found difficult to overcome. The most prominent one involves local multiplayer. Evolution’s multiplayer mode involves passing around the controller or Switch between players rather than each player using their own. This isn’t the most elegant solution and in handheld mode at least, there is very little in place to prevent a less scrupulous player from “accidentally” sneaking a peek at the cards in an opponent’s hand before passing on the Switch. We would very much have preferred it if the game instead implemented connectivity to a smartphone app, similar to Marmalade Game’s digital version of Cluedo.
At the time of writing, the game also suffered from a major glitch that rendered the game unplayable with a pro controller. However, North Star reached out to us and let us know that a patch was in the works, planned to be released shortly before launch. While we’re not sure whether they’ll meet this deadline -reviewing games ahead of launch means things are subject to change- you can rest assured knowing that things work perfectly in handheld mode or docked with joy-cons. If you are suffering from issues, though, the game is one of the few titles that actually has a feature that allows you to directly report any bugs to the developers from inside the game. North Star has already confirmed at least one of the game’s expansions will be added in the future, so it seems like Evolution’s digital journey isn’t quite over yet, and we imagine the developers are closely monitoring how well Evolution is performing on the Switch. This kind of hands-on approach can only be lauded, as it means that, for the foreseeable future at least, North Star is dedicated to delivering the best possible experience to players.
Conclusion
Evolution’s Switch port is a bit of a mixed bag. The core gameplay is solid, thanks to the strong legacy of the original board game which has proven itself for several years now. The addition of the scientist character in the tutorial and the clunky local multiplayer mode are elements that could have used a little more polish, however. Given that the digital version of Evolution is slightly less than half of what the physical board game would cost you and that the single-player campaign really is worth the price of entry, we’d recommend picking up Evolution.
Evolution Board Game - Review,
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