Natural Board Game Review – IGN
Blog Andrew Joseph 11 Sep , 2025 0

Games about creating ecosystems and constantly growing their residents are not a new idea. Publisher Beixing Game A similar title was first published. evolutionin 2014. In the following years, Evolution gave birth to multiple expansions and derivatives and received widespread praise. Designer Dominic Crapucettes It's just that I can't let this idea go, because the nature of 2025 is the latest iteration of this long-term series. I'm glad he sticks with it because this new independent title is by far the best change.
Just like in evolutionThey must feed and protect many different species. In each of the four wheels, you gain new budding life forms, including size and population. The former represents its overall mass and scale, while the latter is the number of animals in the genus. So a small group of elephant-like creatures will have four sizes, but only a few people.
The most interesting aspect is that each species also includes up to three feature cards. This is the neural center of design, as it consists of a nuanced card system that causes difficult strategic decisions. The biggest concern is manual management, as well as guiding evolutionary forces in response to changing circumstances. Each animal is fighting for survival, which includes collecting precious limited food from central waterholes or possibly taking a carnivore route and hunting to make ends meet. Your ability to achieve these goals and contain threats depends on the card.
The trait card is mainly a development mechanism for defense or food collection. You can play fast cards on one of these species to help them outperform predators. Or maybe an armor plate to provide a hardy shell. Likewise, paws can help you collect plants more effectively or provide offensive rewards when hunting other creatures.
Wonderful, the system is ostensibly a Tableau Builder. This is a game style, promoted by similar games Fighting for the Galaxy and 7 miraclesthe player places the card in his or her own personal area and creates a engine Generate points or resources. Nature distorts this formula to create dynamically isolated surfaces representing the player's craft species. Therefore, instead of managing a single image, players build and manipulate several sets of various properties. It is a clever concept to use existing mechanisms to create an ecosystem of developing entities that must constantly change to adapt to their environment.
The environmental pressures of motivational adaptation are mainly the result of the hunter system. When you play cards while turning, you may always take the hunter trait on one of your species. This makes them carnivorous, avoiding watering holes, and instead seeking to transcend prey and feed on their population. The reason for this is that waterhole plant food is limited, especially when species numbers and populations are upgraded late game.
The predator also swallows the population, effectively damaging the opponent's surface and weakening its species. Population and eating will lead to points for this game, as every symbol of devouring food is deposited for final game score. Feeding another player’s backpack not only points it out for you, but also reduces their food consumption. This is the cruel aspect of the game, but rooted in the interaction and evolutionary power of the players.
Many of these processes are the same as the evolution of the predecessors of nature. The reason for the new version of the game is to unify the design and its expansion in a single family of products that work together and its many branches. This also allows natural basic games to streamline and simplify a new generation of players. Crapucettes’ goal is to make a game that provides a sufficient base of enthusiasm for a wide range of audiences while allowing endless expansion to place its complexity and nuance on a solid foundation. Nature aims to attract gamers, amateurs of almost any level or Newcomer.
By measurement, nature is mainly success. There are several extension modules that add dinosaurs, flying creatures, random events and environments, such as Amazon or Arctic tundra. Most people have added new feature cards, which are separate from the main card set. Unified implementation makes integration easier and setup and disassembly easy. The framework also allows multiple extensions to be used together to adjust the experience. This is the strongest quality in nature because it varies according to the selected content.
For example, you want a more violent and exciting game. The Jurassic expansion adds prettier tools to the predator and is therefore easy to include. But abandoning in the Amazon environment will also introduce a bluff element with hidden features, which will increase tension and lead to a bolder attack. Next time you play, you can swap the Jurassic for flight, which will result in much less confrontational times, and instead focus on the migration of birds in swarms, which are a new scoring avenue.
Scalability is the core asset of design. Nature, as a simplified and simplified experience, will disappoint people for those who have played this gaming system before. But I think comparing the natural set to the core set of evolution: climate is fair. The breadth and scope of each product need to be evaluated, and the natural ability to develop and insert new content in a way similar to its own player-driven trait selection is a grand adaptation.
The main disadvantage of nature is the tempting feeding process. The process involves taking food from watering holes equal to the size of the species and is completely independent of the population. Furthermore, it is strange that larger creatures don’t need to eat more food. This is mechanically working and is an important aspect of the system, but it is unintuitive and players may find it difficult to internalize it. The rest of the design is very elegant, the card playback is clean and consistent, and everything goes very smoothly. I'm not sure if the design itself can be further engraved, but since this mechanism is not a completely flush mechanism, it's a lingering question.
Nevertheless, nature has achieved its overall goal. It has a modest rule set and great potential. Inserting new extensions is seamless, while the other rules are just a few paragraphs. The core system is still very clear. It conveys the theme of its evolutionary biology effortlessly. Beixing Game Continue to earn its flagship amateur title, showing new tips and traits.