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Evolution: Climate—hereafter simply referred to as Evolution—presents itself as a bucolic game. I start by creating some adorable new species with tiny body sizes and low populations. The climate is temperate, the food abundant, the predators rare. My furry little rascals satiate themselves with the plentiful food beside the watering hole. "Nature red in tooth in claw?" Not here.

But the abundance of food encourages huge population growth—and not just among my species, but all around the table. The vegetarian options available from the watering hole just barely feed every creature. And then the climate changes; a cold snap puts pressure not just on the food supply, but on all species with small body sizes.

Those populations that evolve beneficial traits like "fat storage" or "burrowing" have an advantage in this food-restricted, chilly world. Everyone else will struggle—and populations will shrink.

Game details Designer: Dominic Crapuchettes, Dmitry Knorre, Sergey Machin

Publisher: North Star Games

Players: 2-5

Age: 12+

Playing time: 60 minutes

Price: US: $47 from Dominic Crapuchettes, Dmitry Knorre, Sergey MachinNorth Star Games2-512+60 minutes: US: $47 from Amazon , or check your local game store

Populations will shrink even further when—to take a purely hypothetical example—Ars Managing Editor Eric Bangeman evolves a carnivorous species with a large enough body to attack your beloved burrowing rodents. Burrowers can only be attacked when they're hungry, since the need for food drives them to forage above ground, so Eric's carnivores feast upon the blood and bones of my starving field mice. The entire species faces extinction as its population drops.

But if Jurassic Park taught us anything (and I'm not sure it did), it's that "life finds a way." My shrinking species eventually equalizes its population with the available food, and in this newly carnivorous world, I make sure to kit out my other species with defensive traits like "horns," "group herding," and "climbing." From my perch in the branches, then, I look down upon Eric's carnivores, who are now themselves starving in turn.

But the evolutionary race isn't over, as the carnivores can increase population to defeat "group herding," increase body size to overcome "cooling frills," and add "climbing" to come after my lizards in the treetops. In Evolution, no animal is ever permanently safe—not even the apparently "strong."

Adapt or die

That Evolution accomplishes this type of sophisticated ecological modeling with such a simple ruleset is one of the game's key strengths. The game can be taught in a few minutes and consists largely of card play. In each round, players draw trait cards based on the number of species they have. One of these cards is discarded to the "watering hole" in the center of the game board, where it adds food tokens to that round's harvest. The rest of the cards are used to create a new species, to increase the body size or population of a current species, or to add the listed trait to a current species.

After the cards are revealed, food cards are revealed, the climate is modified if necessary (more on that in a bit), and all hungry species feed in turn order. Herbivores—the species default—can eat only from the vegetation available in the watering hole. Carnivores can only eat other species, and they must do so if it the only available species to eat is another one belonging to the same player. When all food is gone, populations decrease if that particular species could not fully feed itself. All feed tokens, which count as points in end-game scoring, then go in each player's bag, and cards are drawn for the next round.

Clever use of the trait cards allows for creative combos designed to secure more of the limited food supply before your opponents. For instance, a species with "cooperation" will, whenever it eats, provide an additional food token to the species on its right. "Foraging" allows a species to take two food tokens instead of one on each turn. Combine them and you can grab three food in a single turn.

Other traits offer protection through increased body size or fertility for increased population. "Mud wallowing" forces carnivores to discard one card in order to attack, while "scavenger" allows a species to scrounge for food whenever a carnivore attacks any other species. "Heavy fur" and "hibernation" both protect against cold, while "cooling frills" and "burrowing" can help with extreme heat.

Every trait feels well-integrated with the game's themes, and each game I played has offered an eye-opening look at how these traits might interact with food and climate to produce nature's complex ecosystems. I almost felt like I was learning something—and having great fun doing so.

I'm not the only one who has felt this was playing Evolution, either. In 2015, the prestigious science journal Nature took a look at three evolution-themed games and pronounced Evolution "our favourite by far."