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Nature Board Game: Kickstarter Preview

  • Reading time:12 mins read

Nature is a new game in the Evolution series coming to Kickstarter in September 2024. In this game, similar to its predecessors, Evolution and Oceans, players create species, evolve them, and feed them to score points. Let’s dive into how the game works and what it has to offer.

Gameplay

Nature features a modular system, with five modules included in the box (more on these later). You can incorporate up to two modules into your games. Without any modules, the game plays over four rounds but with each extra module, another round is added.

Each species has three key characteristics: size, population, and up to three traits. The combination of size and traits determines a species’ Hunt, Defend, and Forage values and dictates how a species behaves in various situations. Besides, increasing these values, trait cards can also grant special abilities. Population determines how much a species can eat—a larger population allows a species to consume more food, resulting in more points, as each food consumed is worth one point.

Each round is divided into four phases: Preparation, Adapting, Feeding, and Cleanup. Let’s break down these phases.

Nature Jurassic Cards

Preparation

In this phase, food is added to the watering hole, players draw five cards from the deck, and each player receives a new species with a population and size of one. If a player’s species has lost size or population in the previous round, the new species receives those losses, starting as larger species with more population.

Adapting

In the Adapting phase, players can play or discard as many nature cards as they like. Discarding a card allows a player to increase the size or population of their species while playing a card as a trait adds a trait to a species. Trait cards usually enhance a species’ foraging, hunting, or defense abilities, and may also provide unique powers. As a free action, predatory cards can be added to any species to evolve them into a predator. These cards are on the table and available to all players.

Feeding

During the Feeding phase, players take turns choosing one of their species to feed. This continues around the table until all species are fully fed or the food supply runs out. Predatory species hunt other species and receive food equal to the size of the prey. Non-predatory species forage from the watering hole based on their foraging value. Species that starve or are hunted lose population.

Cleanup

In this phase, players put all food tokens eaten by their species into their bags and prepare for the next round.

The Modular System

The standout feature of Nature is its modular system. As mentioned earlier, you can add one or two modules to your games, each of which alters the gameplay in a unique way. The base game includes five modules, and North Star Games has committed to releasing one new module per year for the next decade, promising plenty of new content and variability over time.

Each of the five included modules focuses on a different aspect of the game and introduces meaningful rule changes. The rules, cards, and gameplay mechanics tied to these modules are highly thematic. Let’s take a look at how these modules affect the game:

Jurassic

  • Players can draw their five cards from Nature or Jurassic decks in any combination.
  • Species grow by increments of two instead of one when increasing in size.
  • The maximum size of a species is doubled, allowing species to reach size 8 instead of 4.
  • The deck includes five unique cards.

Rainforest

  • Players can draw from the Nature or Rainforest decks in any combination.
  • Population increases by two instead of one.
  • Lost population isn’t carried over to new species in the next round.
  • Trait cards are hidden until the player decides to reveal and use them
  • Species with climbing traits can only be hunted by other climbing species and can eat fruits (a new food type) which are worth two points instead of one.
  • A new trait card introduces poisonous species, which cause predators to lose four population tokens. After getting poisoned, the predator gains a Poison Resistance Token, which reduces future losses when attacking poisonous species.
  • The deck contains five unique cards.

Arctic Tundra

Food is scarce, and growing a species’ population is more challenging with this module—fitting for the Arctic Tundra theme!

  • Players can draw from the Nature or Arctic Tundra decks in any combination.
  • The watering hole receives only one food per player each round.
  • Adding population requires discarding two cards instead of one.
  • Discarding a card to add food to the watering hole provides only one food, regardless of the card’s value.
  • At the end of the Feeding phase, species lose population due to the cold, with smaller species losing more than larger ones.
  • The deck includes five unique cards.

Flight

  • Flying species can only grow to size two, can only be hunted by other flying species, and don’t earn the two points other surviving species score.
  • Flying species can migrate during feeding, entirely removing them from the phase but potentially returning with one additional fed population at the end, earning more points.

If you are interested, these are all of the cards included in these four modules:

Natural Disasters

This module introduces a deck of events that alter the rules in various ways. Some cards last for multiple rounds, while others affect only a single round. Each round, a new card is revealed and added to the Natural Disasters row.

Is This Game for You?

Like its predecessors, Nature is highly thematic but its modules take the theme to another level while offering more variety. If North Star Games upholds its promise of releasing new modules for the next decade, this game will be playable and will have new content for years to come. The artwork is also superior to other games in the series with stunning illustrations and vibrant colors.

If you enjoy Evolution or Oceans, Nature will likely be a great fit for you, especially with the added variety and dynamics the modules bring and some rule changes that improve the experience. However, if you weren’t a fan of those games, these changes might not be enough to win you over as the overall feel of the game is the same. If you have not tried Evolution or Oceans, we highly recommend starting with Nature, it has become our favorite in the series and is superior to its predecessors in many ways.

If you’d like to know more, be sure to check out the Kickstarter campaign here.

Disclosure: We received a prototype of this game from the publisher.

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