As Gogolski says...
Who hasn't designed an Evolution game at some stage? It's one of th great challenges of game design.
Yes :) Maybe we should create a club called Evolution Board Game Designers Club :)
Mine is simply called EVOLUTION, and like Tomi's, it is a strategy/wargame with continental drift - though my drift is historical rather than player-driven (a nice idea that, Tomi). I use Risk counters for pieces and playing cards as the game-driver.
Are the risk counters like little soldiers in Risk? Or what are they? Playing cards are for competition?
Players strive to rise up the Genus Table which gives them a competitive advantage in the territorial wargame that develops. But here's the kicker: each player can also evolve into an ecological niche. And it's not the carnivorees that the herbivores need to look out for - it's the other herbivores who are competing for the same food!
I have controlled this Genus Table thing with the speciestiles so that each individual speciestile shows which species they are. I wanted to make it so, that one could win the game even when playing with insects or critters (of cambrian era) and not necessarily mammals or dinosaurs. However I think your idea gives a good motivation for the species to evolve and survive. In my game this is not so straightforward (being good or bad?) but merely an individual thing in one speciestile; the colours of the species show how diverse they are (and on the otherhand how specialized they are; the more the same colour the more powerful they are competing in that biome (niche) but more easily killed by climate change. It´s realistic that the competition between species is not a predator vs. prey thing but more like a animals using same resources like you said. This was a big challenge for me too and I decided to keep it simple and just say:"my own species are adapted to each other and there is a "balance" but opponent´s species are competitors of food and living space.
The game works very well, but it's far too long for today's market (about 8 hours for a full game). And while the drifting continents are really neat, they would make the production costs spiral through the roof.
Maybe you could divide the 8 hours to a smaller victory conditions. Like epochs or eras? Or just "kill your darlings" and streamline it faster? I know been there, done that. It´s of course a lot of work. However maybe every game should not be a fast food lunch. It depends who are you designing the game for.
So this is just one for me and my wargaming friends - until I become uber-famous of course, and Fantasy Flight come knocking at my door. A man can dream, can't he?
FYI, I do remember once reading a (not very complimetary) review of a drifting continents game on BoardGameGeek a couple of years ago, though i'm afraid I can't remember what it was called.
M<
Yes. We are dreamers :) I guess that´s why we do this. I wonder if the game was called Conquest of Pangea? There has been some continent drifting game even earlier, but can´t remember what it was.
I meant to say Tomi, that gameboard looks really beautiful.
How did you solve the problem of continental drift with pieces on the board?
Thanks. I am not sure what your problem is with continental drift? Peaces falling off etc.? Well I wonder if you could use magnets somehow? I have used magnet tape at the bottom of each little speciestoken (that stand in speciestile; speciestile is that rectangle thingy that can hold up to six species). Since I have used a cardboard squares for speciestokens they don´t so easily fall off.
One of the cool things with my design as it stands is that you see the continents split and carry the creatures off with them. It would be much more cost-effective if I could have square continent tiles, instead of actual continent-shaped pieces. But if I did that, players would spend ages transferring pieces from one tile to another.
I like the idea of continents splitting and reforming. I considered it also, but decided to stick with the "known" continent forms and even then there are 35 of them which might be an expensive thing to do; of course publisher may use only 7 continents and use some kind of token to show which biome the continent is (desert, jungle etc.)
Actually the creatures traveling with continental drifting is kind of an peculiar way of planning an attack against opponent - like playing a continent card and then moving the continent next to a continent an opponent is holding and then moving and attacking there. Kind of an unexpected attack in the sense of how we humans see it :)
Anyway, best of luck. If you really have managed to create a realistically 'historical' evolution game with continental drift that plays in less than 2 hours, you deserve to get it published.
M<
Actually sometimes realism is not enough and one has to improve it :) but hmm... who knows about realism when considering such a huge thing like evolution etc. I think my prioritys are that it feels right and is also fun, since players rarely are so specialized in the evolution theory. I intentionally want to keep it kind of an open, so that it simulates evolution but also is not too binded by it - so that there can be variations and different kinds of games every time we play. I still believe that Evolution Earth has enough realism so that it can be called evolutiongame yet I want evolution to be fun. I want an asteroid impact or climate change or volcano explosion to be a fun thing in a game.
Actually the playing time used to be 2 hours with 2 players but after I made that scoring system it can easily be played in an hour.
I wish the best of luck for your game too and I´d like to see it and play it too.
Btw: how does your attack/movement - combat system (interspecific competition to be exact :) ) - work? Do you use dice and if - how?
