Card game Evolution is getting an iPad version, as North Star Games demoed at PAX South 2017. The game has you competing in up to 4 player battles to collect food, grow your species, and stop other players before you run out of cards. The game flow goes that you’re dealt several cards, you put one in to determine the food pool for that round based on the card’s food value. Then, you play your cards, either increasing your species’ population or body size, or adding that card as a trait. Once all cards are played, you collect food, which for herbivores is from the plant food pool. For carnivores, it comes from attacking other species – including your own if need be.

This is kind of an interesting game, because it has some elements of deckbuilding (including a fixed pool of cards), but it’s got the interesting combat dynamic to it. The game is rather accessible, and the tutorial that takes a few minutes to play does a good job at introducing the game. I took on the hard AI in a 4-player match, and came in second place in my demo, and I usually am a bit slow to catch on to tabletop games rules. The digital version feels like it’s quite far along right now, but between crowdfunding and alpha testing, don’t expect to be playing the digital version of Evolution until early 2018. The good news for our readers is that the plan is for the game to be paid right now, but obviously that could change. But given the nature of the game, it would be tough to do it as a more traditional free-to-play game, possibly something more in the Ascension model, but there’s a long way to go until this one is ready for release. Though, it’s looked like it’s in pretty good shape at the PAX events it’s been at.