Does “Evolution: Flight” Soar?

Evolution: Flight always had a hard task ahead of it. Like the birds it brings into Evolution, this expansion to the popular 2014 game from North Star Games had no margin for error.

The original Evolution was the first strategy game from North Star Games, a maker of popular party games such as Wits and Wagers and Say Anything. The company is well-known for stripping away complex rules to appeal to broad audiences.

Evolution was no exception. It is unquestionably a strategy game, where success depends on using genetic trait cards to create favorable combinations. For example, your creature with a Long Neck might get food before its competitors, then use Cooperation to gather additional food for a second creature, which protects the first creatures from predators with a Warning Call.

Actually playing the cards was simple, though. All game actions were paid for by discarding or placing one card. The game has no hand limits and very few restrictions on what the player can do. The design philosophy is, “do what seems to make sense, and you’ll almost certainly be right.”

Flight threatened to disrupt that balance. If birds were just another trait, there would be nothing to interest experienced players. But if North Star Games added a heavy layer of rules, the casual players in its customer base would be lost.

Flight Made Easy

The actual design steers a course between these two rocks. Avians are a separate species card with a limited body size and a special feeding requirement. The species card comes with a Flight trait card, and the player discards two cards to start up her flying creature. I like this approach, because it fits the “pay one card for each purchase” paradigm taught by the basic game.

There’s a new food source (the Cliff) that can only be reached by creatures with Flight, and a handful of new Trait cards. Some of these traits have different functions if your creature has Flight, but all of these cards are useful for both flyers and non-flyers. There’s a little more text on the cards than in the basic game, but the directions are clear and the cards remain straight-forward.

Flight also introduces Event cards, which are discarded to provide a one-time effect. These cards generated the most questions in our play sessions.

What the Event cards do is clear enough, and players had no trouble fitting them into the “discard something to do something” paradigm. However, the strategic value of these cards is highly situational. New players simply didn’t know when to use the cards, and they were afraid of ignoring something that might turn the game in their favor.

(The actual game effects are pretty minor, but new players don’t know that.)

Aside from the Event cards, however, new players adapted well to the Flight expansion. I quickly found that I could set up the base game with Flight, explain the basic rules, summarize the avian rules, and encourage players to “try an avian species when you’re ready.” The new players would spend a couple of rounds getting comfortable with the basic rules, then buy an avian around mid-game. Flight allows players to master the game at their own pace, and that’s an impressive achievement in game design.

The game still strains a little at six players, since the deck runs out before the sixth player gets a turn at First Player. There’s little to no impact on game balance — going first has as many disadvantages as advantages — but the last player always feels like he is missing out. I’ve been tempted to add a few more cards to guarantee a sixth round, but the game just feels like ten minutes more would be a little too long.

If next year’s Climate expansion adds just a few more cards, the increase in length and depth may leave the six-player game feeling just right. But that’s a balancing act for another day. In the meantime, Flight is a must-have expansion that you can permanently mix into your Evolution set.