Having just completed a super-successful campaign for Vegas Wits & Wagers, North Star Games has now launched their highly-anticipated Kickstarter campaign for Evolution – The Video Game
This is the digital adaptation of their popular strategic, Darwinian card game Evolution, which has already surpassed 25% of its $40,000 funding goal in just a few hours.
Fortunately I was able to get an early peek at the game at PAX East and have been eagerly awaiting this campaign ever since.
Regular readers of this site and listeners of the podcast know that I play a lot of digital board games and this Evolution – The Video Game app hits all the hallmarks of what I consider to be a great digital board gaming experience.
First and foremost it has an intuitive user-interface with great touch controls for playing, viewing and manipulating your cards.
For newcomers (or those just wanting to brush up on the rules), there is an incredible interactive tutorial led by a charming professor, which teaches players not only the basics of the game, but basic strategy as well. The final release of the game will offer a single player mode with three levels of AI as well as a single player campaign mode. There will also be an online multiplayer mode where players can compete against friends or strangers and be matched up against someone of a similar rank.
Finally North Star Games has done an amazing job elevating the experience to more than just a board on a screen. There is an engaging soundtrack and gorgeous animations which bring the game to life, (dare I say) evolving it into an immersive and sensory experience. When you evolve one of your species into a carnivore, you see those claws come out and when they feed, you feel the fierceness of their attack.
While the app won’t be officially releasing until sometime next year, depending on their pledge level, for as little as $10, backers of the Kickstarter campaign will gain access to beta versions on Steam, Android and/or iOS (all of which will support cross-platform play) as soon as the campaign finishes.
Not only will this allow backers to play right away, but they’ll also have a hand in shaping the app and the ability to offer feedback and suggestions on what the final release will look like. Nearly every pledge level also includes final released copies of the app on one or more platforms. Other perks include tournaments against the developers, copies of the original cardboard game, Kickstarter exclusives and loads more.
I’ve had a chance to play an early Alpha build on my iPad and I’m really impressed with that depth and replayability of this game, it’ll surely be one that gets a lot of playtime on my device.
Check out the full list of pledge levels on the campaign page and consider backing the game.
You can watch a short preview video I made below of my experience with the game thus far.
