Gideon’s Perspective
Nature is an evolution of well, Evolution, the board game. I was pretty fond of Evolution, and Nature doesn’t stray too far from its roots, at least conceptually.
In Nature, you are evolving a handful of species, and it’s the survival of the fittest. Food can be scarce, and you have to evolve your species in a way that allows them to eat when the going gets tough.
The goal is to acquire the most points, and you usually do that by eating the most food, be it plantlife from the watering hole or the tasty flesh of other species. You do this by playing trait cards, either to evolve your creature with specific traits, increase its population, or increase its size.
You can find a video version of this review on YouTube!
The thing about Nature is that its adaptation from Evolution is somewhat akin to going from the T-Rex to the Chicken. It’s smaller, more compact, with far fewer teeth, and a lot less cool because of it.
The base game is super streamlined to its own detriment. But there’s a catch here. Nature is a foundation. Not unlike how you modify your species with traits, you are also meant to modify your Nature experience with modules. The base game is sanded down to allow these modules to slide in seamlessly, and this is where the game gets interesting, and where I’m the most intrigued.
Whether this concept lands with you or not is going to depend greatly on how you view the game’s sales model. And that applies to both the Digital version I’m reviewing and its real-life physical counterpart.
| Gideon’s Bias | Nature Information |
|---|---|
| Review Copy Used: Yes | Publisher: North Star Digital Games |
| Hours Played: 6+ | Type: Full Game |
| Reviewed On: PC | Platforms: PC, (Mobile to come in December) |
| Fan of Genre: Yes | Genre: Digital Board Game |
| Mode Played: Variety | Price: $12.99 ($24.99 with Jurassic and Flight bundle) |
The Nature of a Thing
Nature is played over a handful of rounds. You start with a single species, but gain another one every round. The watering hole gets a random amount of food each round, based on player count, but it’s almost never enough to feed everyone. You get a handful of trait cards that can be used in several ways.
You can simply play a card on a species to give it that trait. A trait might make a species Plated for extra defense, or Social, so it eats more food at a time. Trait cards can also be used to increase a species’ size or population. The higher the population, the more food they can eat, which means more points. The larger the species, the more difficult they are to hunt, and they eat more food at a time, which means less food for your opponents.
The catch is, once trait cards are played, each player takes turns picking one of their species to eat food. When a species eats food from the watering hole, it eats a number of food equal to its size and UP to its population. If your turn comes around again and there’s no food left, your hungry population starves out.
To mitigate this, you can hold back cards to use to put food in the watering hole. Alternatively, you can also make some of your species a predator that attacks other species for food. To do that, however, a predator’s combined size and attack value have to exceed its victims’ combined size and defense value.
There’s quite a bit of clever strategy involved with this process. You have to figure out how to best maximize your food without starving yourself while attempting to starve out others. This can lead to some chess-like counterplay with the traits.
Perhaps someone went all in on a predator, so you not only counter with some defensive cards, but give your species the scavenger trait so they get some food whenever someone hunts. Maybe someone made a big gluttonous creature, so you purposely hold back cards with small amounts of food, and slowly consume it yourself while leaving nothing left over for them.
It’s definitely fun, and Nature also features a pretty cool campaign that modifies the rules with special challenges. Furthermore, the AI is split into various personality types, and they play very well, which makes them the perfect complement, or even a replacement for human players.
The issue I have is that the base gameplay is very sanded down from Evolution to such an extent that it can feel repetitive and, at times, arbitrary. For example, Evolution had 17 types of trait cards, Nature has just 9. Whenever you lose population due to starvation or a predator, its population and size get rolled into your new species next round, in addition to giving you any trait cards back.
This does make the game more forgiving and new player-friendly. But it also slices a good deal of depth and variety from the game. It also vastly lowers the skill ceiling. Since you get your lost population and size back, games often felt arbitrarily close. The better player would still win, but it was actually rather difficult to do poorly. Furthermore, playing with just 9 traits meant games started feeling samey fairly fast.
However, Nature was built as a foundation for you to modify the base with all the rules you like via modules, and that’s where the game shines.
Modifying Nature
The concept of modules is baked into the very core of Nature. During my review, I had access to two of them, and both will be available at launch. Modules add new mechanics to the game, and a whole new deck of cards alongside Nature’s deck. When drawing cards, you get to choose how to split your draws between the decks, and I thought that was pretty brilliant.
The Jurassic module makes things bigger, literally, species grow to larger sizes and faster. It also features a bunch of traits that tend to focus on attacking and defending, making for a more aggressive game.
The Flight Module, however, is more defensive. You can choose to create flying species that are smaller than the standard ones. Once they eat their fill, they migrate, which keeps them safe for the round and, if you migrate early, you snag some extra population and points from the nest. It features a variety of cards that also shake up the game, such as one that adds food to the watering hole before you eat.
Using these modules adds depth and variety that the base game was missing. The really cool thing is that you can combine them. Playing with either Flight or Jurassic already changes the game, and playing both of them together blows the doors wide open on it and gives me that crunchier, heavier game that I enjoy.
The physical version of Nature has 5 different modules, with more planned in the future, and these modules will be coming to the digital version. You are free to mix and match them when they are available, and that has me incredibly excited. There are two problems, however.
First, Nature Digital is only launching with two of them. Secondly, well, you have to pay for them. You can buy a combined version at launch, but you will likely be buying new ones piecemeal. That’s not inherently a problem, I’m all for expansions after all.
However, the base game feels…limited, maybe even incomplete. You have to be okay with knowing that you’re buying a foundation when you buy the base game. That’s definitely not going to sit well with everyone, and it’s made me hesitate on the physical board game version of Nature. However, the launch price of the combined digital version is quite reasonable, and I’m happy just viewing that as the actual base game while we wait on future modules.
Verdict
The best thing about modules is how they will let you tailor the game to you’re own liking. Someone like me is likely to pile in as many of them as I can and bury myself in cards and mechanics. But you don’t have to do that. You can use the modules to tailor the game to the style of Nature that you want to play, or are in the mood for. There are a lot of possibilities at play, and it definitely makes me understand why the base game is so streamlined.
Marketing that idea, however, may be a bit of a bumpy road for NorthStar Game Studio. That said, it’s much easier to commit to the digital version because of the reasonable price point.
In the end, Nature is an excellent digital adaptation of a board game. While the base game feels a bit too sanded down, the modules add the depth I was looking for and has me chomping at the bit for more to be released.
