About Evolution

First there was the big bang... but let's start some billions of years later, outside Dominoes toy shop in Leicester, UK!

Old favourites I used to play with family and friends were still going strong; Monopoly, Cluedo and Risk and the Game of Life. Beyond that, there were few other popular, interactive family games on show. Lots of great new games; strategic and role-playing, but none with quite the same impact of the classics.

What are winning ingredients in those games? Universality? A self-contained "world"? Easy to digest rules? All-age appeal? Good player interaction? A goal that inspires competitive play? Maybe all of those elements and perhaps a few more! Even then I suspect that many games with all those elements never see the light of a retailers shelf, simply because they are not economic to make. Anyhow new authors keep trying. If "there's one book in all of us" is true, its also true for board games, judging by the thousands of games invented each year!

Evolution theme

Since the early 90's I had toyed with the idea that the theme of Evolution could be a great basis for a game. On publishing EVOLUTION, I discovered that there are at least two other games with the same name so clearly the theme has inspired others! My first board game attempt was called ADAM'S WEB and was developed, as far as it went, with the help of games consultant David Pritchard. Mid- way through the short life of ADAM'S WEB he joked that an author he knew had re-written his game rules 73 times before he was satisfied with them. I should have realised then what I was in for!

To cut a short story even shorter ADAM'S WEB was a very abstract race game. The board had many tramlines making it look like a puzzle. It had 360 pieces, umpteen cards and simple play, which perversely, was complicated to describe. Even with variations I tried to incorporate, it failed in the end to excite. Even so a few publishers were kind enough to take a look at it at SPEIL 2002 (Essen) and make a few polite comments. ADAM'S WEB did have nice interactive combat cards, which I may develop further some day.

Essen was a revelation to me and I highly recommend it to any budding games inventor (unlike me, good to visit before you have gone too far with any idea); hoards of visitors and islands of play tables outside many stands, populated with engrossed, heads-down players. Superbly illustrated and very skilful and strategic board and card laying games. Perhaps a mite too cerebral, possibly a bit slow and certainly more complex than what I was aiming at but still the enjoyment was evident.

Game mechanism

Anyway the inspiration was there: a board built up of cards? Great idea! So why not create your own path with cards and move along that path with a playing piece? EVOLUTION was born. David's advice was: create a real world with good interaction. Avoid abstract images and mechanisms. Make the play consistent with the "world" and include a mix of skill and luck. From September 2003 onwards, various game ideas were developed, namely:

A central hexagonal board with six designated animal sectors (3 predators and 3 grazers). Later replaced by the current volcano board. If I were absolutely forthcoming I'd also mention that originally there were fighting plants (cacti and venus fly trap) in the game but I'll keep that a secret for now.
Initially 5 "Era" and 5 "creature" card types which had to be laid in sequence. Creature cards were later abandoned so that 8 era card types were used.
Early on, era card artwork was fairly abstract (mainly because of limitations of my graphic design ability!) and had limited range of symbols. The full range was developed to be realistic "aerial" views. Making realistic "deep" looking ravines for example was tricky!
Movable volcano in the form of a cone added. These were "eruptible" in a similar way to the fixed volcanoes on era cards.
Various methods of combat, including use of combat cards, eventually replaced by the current prediction contest.
Action cards within the main evolution pack to trigger off natural events via thunderbolt (chance) cards. Thunderbolt penalties were initially random but later connected to the "risk factor" of the terrain on the cards laid in a path.
Overall rules revised many times (more than 73 times, I suspect!) with the main goal to keep to one A4 sheet.
Eras could only be laid on own paths initially but later changed, to allow card laying insertion / adding / replacement on any path. Since it was fitting that a creature had to go through all stages of evolution, a piece drag-back rule was added so that the playing piece moved back to the newly inserted era in a path.
Free for all prediction contest limited to premium era cards.

Testing the game

The many iterations of the game were tested by various friends including David Pritchard, the City of Leicester School Games Club and Dr Eric Solomon. Finally all the game cards and graphics were showcased by Dan Whetton's superb box lid image. Inspiration for some of the animal images, were from photographs obtained under licence from stock image suppliers. Ignoring a few more minor game and rule changes, that was essentially the evolution of EVOLUTION!