Review

Darwinning

Which Species Will dominate?

As a trained biochemist I am interested in evolution, and I also like puns, therefore I visited the booth of the Multamäki family at the fairs in Nuremberg and Cannes to playtest Darwinning, a trick taking game on developing various species, albeit not always in the way Darwin would expect it to work.

Each player selects one species out of a range of ten animals - the selection covers Amoeba, Fish, Mice as well as elephant and Tyrannosaurus Rex - and tries to give them the optimum chance to survive during four eras - with the biggest population, adapted to every kind of environment and sitting at the top of the food chain!

Each species begins with a given size of population - nine amoeba or one dinosaur, pre-set environments for food and two cards printed on the Species Board and, of course, their position in the food chain, marked on the food chain track.

3x14 cards carry values of 1 to 14, and are present twice each in three colors, marked by a symbol - acorn, flower and blueberry; a fourth color with a leaf symbol and a card of value 15 in all four colors are stretch goals and will make the game playable with six players. Cards can be used in four separate ways, dependent on the symbols they carry: With a symbol for food, the card can be placed above the species board and move your marker forward accordingly on the food chain track. If the card carries an egg symbol, you can place it to the right of the species board and raise your population accordingly. A card carrying an environment symbol can be placed to the left of your species board to improve environmental adaption; you cannot own an environment twice and cannot add a card for a symbol that is already printed on the species board. And, as the fourth option, you can place a card carrying an attribute symbol for its effect on one of the five cases provided on and at the bottom of he species board; you can cover cards already in place, also those printed on the board, but you cannot own the same attribute twice.

How do I get such cards? Well, at the start of the game, you are dealt 10 cards for you hand, and between three and five environment cards, depending on the era, are displayed openly. Then you play tricks; whoever is at the bottom of the food chain, leads for trick and plays one or several cards; the next player must top this with a better/stronger combination or, if he cannot do so, play a single card; card colors are of no importance. When everybody has played a combination, the strongest combination wins the trick.

Possible combinations are similar to Poker combinations:

One single card

Pair - two cards of the same value

Flush - three cards of the same color, regardless of value

Straight - A series of three consecutive values

Triple - three cards of the same value

Straight Flush: Three cards of consecutive values in the same color

Foursome - Four cards of the same value

In case of similar combinations - for instance, straights of 3-4-5 and 4-5-6 are played - the winner is the combination with the higher total, in case of an additional tie the winner is the combination that was played later.

The winner of the trick can now use one card from the combination that won the trick to upgrade his species in one of the ways described earlier - there is no limitation or restriction - you can give your fish a Carapace or Teeth to your mice that can eat a carapace, you can acquire Symbioses and therefore acquire food from another species in a given era, and so on and so on.

If someone is out of cards after a trick, the era ends, and this last trick is resolved differently - it is not the winner of the trick you may improve his species, but all other players can use one of the cards they played in this trick; all other remaining cards are discarded.

Then, in order of the position in the food chain - each species is checked for survival. Every species needs one food unit for each population unit; if there is not enough, the species loses one population; in case of surplus food, the species grows by one population; if there is exactly the right amount of food, nothing happens. Available food is gleaned from 1. correlation between an environment on display and an environment on your species board; 2. Eating of other species below you on the food chain - the eaten species receives a bite token, the eating one gets two food; some attributes enable you to eat upwards (e.g. Teeth), some block eating (Carapace, Camouflage), or make a species inedible (Poison), and 3. From some attributes directly.

After feeding has been resolved, each species with two or more bite tokens loses one population. Then the next era is prepared by displaying the corresponding number of environment cards and dealing ten cards to each player.

After the fourth era, each species is scored: You win points corresponding to your position on the food chain track; each population below and up to equal the population count at the start of the game gives you one point; additional population units score two points each. Environments on your species board are worth one point, additionally acquired environment adaptations score two points. All additional attributes that were not placed in the 0 Point position score one point, if they carry numbers 1 to 9, and three points, if they carry numbers 10 to 15.

The winner is the species with the highest total score; in case of a tie, the species with more population unit wins, if there is another tie after that, the species higher up in the food chain wins.

Darwin has not won, he probably would develop the attribute of rotating instead! The winners this time were the Mice with Teeth and Communication, which protected them from species above them in the food chain, they could only be eaten by species below them. Mice even ate the dinosaur, whose Carapace was no help at all, as the Mice had those fearsome teeth that can crack a Carapace; furthermore, dinosaurs are rare, and they did not manage to acquire the attribute Society, which would have let them eat Mice despite their Communication ability.

As you can easily imagine, Darwinning is fun! Logic is not on demand, and evolution theory not really, but you must make clever use of your cards and make full use of combinations of environments and attributes. Of course, you need a bit of luck of the draw, and a seemingly super combination is not always a guarantee for winning a trick. However, and in any case, Darwinning is a super family game with enough bite to fascinate experienced players.

The game is still in Kickstarter/prototype mode, but the rules are completed, polished and simple to explain and easily understood, there should not much be left to do on that account. The graphics are not final yet, I myself quite liked the comics design of the prototype; some people, however, tend to take the game for a children’s game due to the graphics! But I am sure Timo will find a satisfactory solution and I look forward to the finished product .... and yes, I believe Darwinning will be the first project ever to receive my support on Kickstarter; not due to biochemistry and not due to the pun in the name of the game, but simply because I like it and because it is great fun!

Dagmar de Cassan

Players: 2-6

Age: 8+

Time: 45+

Designer: Tiinaliisa, Timo and Vainö Multamäki

Artist: Jamie Noble Frier, Akha Hulzebos, Lars Munck

Price: Kickstarter

Publisher: Dragon Dawn Productions 2018

Web: Kickstarter

Genre: Trick taking, develop species

Users: For families

Version: en

Rules: de en fr

In-game text: no

Comments:

Prototype on Kickstarter

Topic cutely and wittily interpreted

Standard mechanisms for unexpected results

Special rules for a two-player game

Compares to:

Games on evolution

Other editions:

Prototype

My rating: 6

Dagmar de Cassan:

Fun with evolution, the attributes are well chosen, go well together and yet provide quite surprising effects!

Chance (pink): 1

Tactic (turquoise): 3

Strategy (blue): 1

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 1

Communication (red): 3

Interaction (brown): 0

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0