Nature Game Review

 Dominic Crapuchetts, one of the designers of Evolution, Evolution: Climate and one of the designers of Oceans adjacent to Evolution, had a laundry list of problems with the design of the successful series. Most of them, he found, could not be fixed. They were inherent in the system. The only solution was to start over. This is what he did.

 The result is Nature, a game that will be instantly familiar to anyone who has played Evolution. This is clearly Evolution 2.0, an attempt to make the game simpler, meaner and more flexible. The core idea of the gameplay remains the same: create and evolve species that eat more than anyone else.

 First, you get a new look. Isn't that cute? They always start out both physically small and numerically insignificant: size 1 and a corresponding population. This is your blank canvas. You use cards in your hand to increase size, population, or add traits. Features are the heart of the game, but they're best explained after you've experienced the game, so I'll circle back.

 When everyone decided how to develop their species, it was time for the test. Each player, in turn, activates one species. Each species forages by default by finding food in the supply of vegetation tokens in the middle of the table. Larger species eat more food at once, while species with larger populations can hold more food. The dream, of course, is to have a large size and high density, but this may not be what the ecosystem can sustain. The amount of vegetation available each round depends on the drop of one card at the top of the setup. If you spot a 1, which means each player will add one token at the start of each round, brace yourself for a bumpy ride. Malnourished populations die out, so humans are more likely to turn to predators.

 Predators work a little differently and will be a favorite for aggressive players in your party. Instead of eating tokens from the central supply, carnivores attack other species. Here the value of size changes to attack and defense. A predator can attack only an animal of the same or smaller girth. They kill one population and take a number of food tokens equal to the size of the prey. Any suitable species on the table can be chosen, and the Predator must hunt if it can. Later in the game, this may mean that one of your predators has to go after another of your species. Comedy gold. We love to see that.

 The major change since evolution, probably the key change in how nature is experienced as an experience, concerns death. In Evolution, your hunted and hungry populations are destroyed forever. It is easy for a player with an early advantage to dominate throughout the game. In Nature, you bring back a lost population. They join the new species you get at the start of the next round. The stronger your round, the stronger your next species will be able to come out of the swing. It's possible that an avid player can come back from the edge of the abyss in Nature, which is much more difficult to say about his older brother.

 Let's return to those features. Some increase your defensive ability, making it harder for animals to hunt you. Others improve your ability to forage or give you access to alternative food sources. The features are the area where it is most obvious that Nature is an improvement on the previous design. There were 17 different possible cards in the Evolution deck. Nature has eight. As much as brevity is the soul of wit, it is also the heart of good game design. Where evolution sometimes felt chaotic and unwieldy, nature makes you a much more intentional god.

 Even within the relatively narrow parameters of only eight signs, the variability of Nature is impressive. This is an extremely reactive game. When everyone is playing well, one player making a different choice has consequences that cause everyone else to deviate from their chosen course. I've played probably half a dozen sessions of the base game and none of them felt the same. And that's before we factor in modules.

MODES

 Nature is a modular system that gives players more control over the type of experience they have. Five modules - Rainforest, Arctic Tundra, Natural Disasters, Flight and Dinosaurs - are part of the initial release, and each one adds a unique twist to the process.

 The rainforest is bountiful, providing explosive population growth and unlimited food resources—at least for those species that can climb.

 Natural disasters for those who hate planning and love a bit of drama. Each round a new rule or instant effect is introduced, causing a variety of potential disasters.

 The flight module is probably my favorite. It has my favorite set of traits and introduces migration to the game which brings some pretty subtle points.

 Dinosaurs seem to be a favorite and I can see why. It's fun to have all these big, aggressive dinosaurs stomping around. The final production version of Nature will use dials instead of stacks of wooden tokens—an aesthetic loss that also arguably improves quality of life—but having an 8-token tall stack of Predators is a hoot.

 Each of these five spices not only tastes good on its own, they can be mixed. When playing with modules, players can draw cards at the top of the round from any combination of decks. If I need two dino cards, a basic card, and two flight cards, I can do that. Even cooler, it gives the other players some idea of what shenanigans I might have planned and can influence what decisions they make. As I understand it, there are plans to release two new modules per year for the foreseeable future. This should ensure that nature will have plenty of variety to keep you entertained.

NATURAL SELECTION

 I've played Nature several times over the past three years in various stages of development. It was obvious from the first play that this was something special, and it only got better as time went on. My review copy is an early one, and many small adjustments have been made since it was even printed. Map effects have been changed. Some components are changed to make the game more user-friendly. But every time I sat down to play, I was left with the feeling that nature is an exciting and wonderful system.

The most reliable indicator of the quality of Nature that I have is the reaction of players to it. Time after time, group after group, with all the variety of gaming tastes, I have yet to see a group finish a game without wanting to immediately dive back in, or try the same setup again, or test the waters on a different module combination. Nature is a whimsical thing.