Evolution - The Game of Intelligent Life

Evolution is a game that is centered on as much luck as it is strategy. Starting as a very low level life form, you must eat, travel and fight your way to the top of the food chain before your opponents do. By selecting your evolutionary cycle with the chain ladder, you determine specific traits about your creature: whether they will walk upright or on all fours, whether or not it will be carnivorous, even the color.

The strategy in this game comes from choosing the right evolutionary path and sticking to it, using the advantages of that chain to the fullest. Because there are no real battles and the game lacks the bloodshed of later strategy games, it would be easy to write this game off as simplistic and non-strategic, but the customizing elements of the game, mixed with the multiple branching pathways available to the player, made this a game that was really ahead of its day. Those elements allow Evolution to remain a game with a very high replay value, even today.
Imagine trying playing through this game the first time, trying your hardest to become the most vicious meat eater ever to roam the earth, only in the end to be outdone by your opponents’ subtle herbivore. Players of this game are quickly exposed to shifting realities, one being that being the meanest won’t always net you the win. While deciding the path you will take in this game, one has to factor food supply, location, even available places for shelter or hiding. Being the biggest won’t always help you claim victory, because everything from size to color factors in on your ability to survive in the sometimes harsh environments produced by the game.
This game isn’t for everyone. It (of course) lacks the graphics of current generation games and it also lacks most of the violence. This is a thinking game above all, so there won’t be any power-ups or invincibility codes to max out your creature. Slow and steady is definitely the pace being set by this game, and it shines for it. The game definitely lives up to its namesake, as it requires a set amount of intelligence to get through, as well as a certain amount of patience. Some instances of death in the game seem unavoidable and certain decisions early on can bring doom far too late into the game without you really knowing it. But, if you can manage to overcome these minor hang-ups, you’ll find a game rich in diversity that is truly hard to play the same way twice. And for parents, the game is educational as well, so as long as you don’t tell the young ones, everyone is in for a great treat.