Animals

In Evolution, players adapt their species in a dynamic ecosystem where food is scarce and predators lurk. Traits like Hard Shell and Horns will protect your species from Carnivores, while a Long Neck will help them get food that others cannot reach. With over 4,000 ways to evolve your species, every game becomes a different adventure.

Evolution packs a surprising amount of variety for a game with simple rules. The variety comes from the synergies between the trait cards and from the different personalities at the table. Some players thrive on creating Carnivores to wreak havoc on their fellow players. Others prefer to stay protected and mind their own business. Evolution encourages both play styles by giving each of them multiple paths to victory. And it is the mix of play styles at the table that ultimately determines the eco-system in which the player are adapting. So gather your friends and see who can best adapt to the changing world around them.

Set-up
1) Give every player a food bag.
2) Randomly choose the start player.
3) Shuffle the cards and start playing! (easy peasy)

Turn Sequence for Each Round
1) Drawing cards: 3 cards + 1 card per species

2) Playing cards:
• Play one face-down card to determine the amount of plant food available this round.
• Play cards to create new species and modify existing species.

3) Feeding phase:
• Reveal the food cards and put that number of food on the Watering Hole.
• Feed your species plant food - or -
• Attack another species if you have a carnivore

4) Clean up phase:
• Species that received no food go extinct.
• Reduce the population of species that were not fully fed
• Place the food in your score bag.

End of Game
When the deck runs out, play one final round and then score points.

End of Game Scoring:
• 1 point for each food in your bag
• 1 point for each population of your existing species
• 1 point for each trait on your existing species

Two to seven players, ages 8 and up try to obtain fried worms for their chickens, so that they don't go hungry. Of course, anyone who doesn't manage to grab a worm off of the grill can help himself to those of his opponents. This fast-paced game by Reiner Knizia is, like Hick Hack im Gackelwack, a gambling game in the finest chicken tradition."

Each turn players roll their dice and set aside all those matching any single value. The remaining dice are rolled and any value is set aside again until the player stops and takes a tile or busts and puts their last tile back. When a player busts and fails to take a tile they must also turn the highest tile face-down.

Interestingly, the German edition from Zoch has English rules in the box.

The Dutch edition is part of the Jakkie & Bak Collection
The German edition is part of The Chicken Family of Zoch.

The Grasshopper & the Ant is the fourth title in Purple Brain Games' "Tales & Games" series, each of which comes packaged in a book-shaped box. In this game, players take turns playing the part of the industrious ants and the grasshopper content to sponge off the labor of the ants.

The Grasshopper & the Ant includes two ways to play, but the heart of both is the same. At the start of the game, lay out 16 (of the 48) path cards in a 4x4 grid; each path card shows one of four types of landscapes. The ant player places six ants on these cards, one ant per card, with the ants forming a chain (as in real life), then secretly chooses one type of terrain on which at least one ant stands. The grasshopper player then stands with one of the ants, and if the grasshopper chose the same landscape as the ant player, the grasshopper takes all the path cards of this type on which an ant stands; if the grasshopper chose incorrectly, then the ant player takes these path cards. Either way, you then refill the 4x4 grid. The ant player keeps playing until she finally wins path cards, then the next player in clockwise order controls the ants. (In winter mode, the third and fourth players control red ants and receive a random path card if they match the choice of the ant player.)

In autumn mode, players score path cards immediately, with each type being tracked independently; path cards that feature insects are saved for a endgame bonus. As soon as a player maxes out two scoring tracks, the game ends and whoever has the most points wins.

In winter mode, players keep the path cards they collect in order to buy provision cards (worth one victory point), which cost particular combinations of path types. In this mode, when you win a path card that features an insect, you can claim another card in the grid that features the same insect. Collect both provision cards of the same type, and you score a bonus VP. The first player to collect 4 VPs wins.

In Myrmes, originally shown under the name ANTerpryse, players control ant colonies and use their ants to explore the land (leaving pheromones in their wake); harvest "crops" like stone, earth and aphids; fight with other ants; complete requests from the Queen; birth new ants; and otherwise dominate their tiny patch of dirt, all in a quest to score points and prove that they belong at the top of the heap, er, anthill. After three seasons of scrabbling and foraging, each ant colony faces a harsh winter that will test its colonial strength.

In game terms, each player has an individual game board to track what's going on inside his colony – that is, whether the nurses are tending to larvae or doing other things, where the larvae are in their growth process, what resources the colony has, which actions are available to workers when they leave the colony, and so on. The shared game board shows the landscape outside the exit tunnel that all colonies share; after exiting this tunnel, workers ants can move over the terrain to place pheromones (which gives them access to resource cubes), clean up empty pheromones (to make space), hunt prey (by discarding soldiers) or place special tiles (but only if they've developed the ant colony).

The game lasts three years, and at the start of each year three season dice are rolled to determine the event for each season: extra larvae or soldiers, more VPs for actions, and so on. Within each season, players can spend larvae to adjust the event for themselves on their personal player board. (Put the kids to work!) After adjusting the event, player allocate nurses to birth larvae, worker or soldier ants or to use them for other actions. The worker ants then do their thing, working within the colony itself (although only one colony level is open initially) or traveling to the outside world to hunt prey (ladybugs, termites, spiders), lay down pheromones (which later lets them claim resources on these spaces), place special tiles (like an aphid farm or sub-colony), or clear out pheromones left by ants from any colony. After harvesting, nurses who didn't tend to births then take additional actions, such as opening a new tunnel that only your colony can use, clearing a new level within your colony, or meeting one of the six objectives (capture a certain number of prey, build special tiles, and so on) laid out at the start of the game.

After three seasons, players must pay food to get their colony through winter, losing points if they can't. Whoever has the most points after three years wins. All hail our new ant overlords!

A "Hide-and-Seek" game for 2 to 6 players.
One player acts as wolf, and gives the other players 5 seconds time to hide their goat in one of seven furniture pieces. The Wolf then can look at 2 pieces and capture all the goats that are present there. The undiscovered goats get points.

Awards

2009 Golden_Ace, French Childrens' Game of the Year