Review: EVOLUTION BOARD GAME and CLIMATE Expansion
The fight for resources is as old as time itself (in a manner of speaking). Animals have been fighting and killing each other forever, but some adapt and change in order to survive and grow. This is what the Evolution Board Game is about. It is a game of growing different species, fighting for food, and eating each other. The digital version of this game and its expansion run really smoothly and look fine, but some of the design components and the game overall are a bit lackluster.
Let’s talk about the game evolution itself. It is relatively easy to understand and easy to play. There is a bit of reading needed on the individual cards, but nothing that a 10-year-old couldn’t figure out. It is pretty nice that the game doesn’t require a lot of components or different parts, players only have four different actions each turn and they are all relatively simple to understand and execute. It is a fine game that can require some good strategy, but it doesn’t feel as deep or interesting as something like Scythe, Wingspan, or Lords of Waterdeep. Check out another opinion about the game itself in this full review from The Dice Tower.
The Nintendo Switch version of the game is a fairly faithful translation of the game. The automation of a number of systems and the way the different species are set up work really well. The button layout for playing cards and assigning traits is a little awkward at first, but because there is an undo button and pretty good button labeling, it’s easy enough to figure out within the first couple of minutes of playing a game. While everything functions smoothly and mostly correctly, the visuals are pretty sterile. Lots of browns and dull greens may be accurate to the nature of the game, but it isn’t very eye-catching. Also, the words and pictures on the cards are legible and passable, but they look like photographs of the cards, not original JPGs or high-res scans. The menus are also pretty drab. It is easy to see that they went for an adventurer or explorer aesthetic, but some finer animation, better layout, more vibrant colors, and nicer music could energize the game a lot. Lastly, the game has lots of in-game advertisements to buys special cards from the store, which I can understand at first, but they keep popping up and it gets real old, real quick.
If you are a big fan of the Evolution game, want to fill out your digital board game collection, or want a relatively easy pass-and-play game on the Switch, I think this is a fine game to purchase and play. But the somewhat drab presentation and more casual gameplay make it much more mediocre.
