Evilution: A Game Of Mad Scientists And Badass Creatures is a card game with a lot of potential. Unfortunately, the campaign for Evilution is sorely lacking.
Basic Information
Players: 2 -5
Ages: 13+
Time: 30 minutes
Estimated Delivery: Unknown
Location: Windsor, CA
Game overview
From the Campaign
In Evilution, you assume the role of a Mad Scientist in charge of your own laboratory. You are given a starting set of animals, and your job is to evolve your critters and lay waste to the enemy.
Each player starts out with a Sponsor, who gives you money based on specific accomplishments. There are also objectives you use to acquire money as well. All this gold let’s you purchase different evolutions for your animals along with lab assistants and equipment. You’ll also navigate random events and acquire potions along the way.
Evilution is a card game for 2-5 people. If you combine Pokemon, Magic: the Gathering, Munchkin, and throw in a dash of Dr. Frankenstein, this is what will most likely come out.
Campaign Specifics
Goal: $25,000
Pledge Tiers: Three tiers ranging from
End Date: Sat, Aug 30 2014 1:27 PM EDT
Funding Type: Fixed
Chances of success
Unlike with many campaigns that I’ve reviewed recently, which had far too many reward tiers, the Evilution campaign simply does not have enough. In fact, it only has three tiers. While this makes the decision of how much to spend when backing the project simple, it doesn’t provide many options.
Two sets of tiers that are missing, which in my opinion are nearly essential to a successful game campaign and launch are the beta tiers and the custom design tiers. Beta testers are essential because you want to ensure that the game you deliver is the best that it can be. If the final release is distributed with major flaws, it’s going to turn people off to your future campaigns as well as, in some cases, to crowd funding in general.
Custom design tiers include allowing the person to work with the artist and game developer to come up with some form of custom element in the game, whether it’s a character, item, or other unique feature. These can be priced fairly high. Backers at this level really want to see the campaign succeed and so will do what they can to help support it.
There should also be a few more perks for being a backer. While having $5 off the potential list price is nice, this form of discount is basic to all campaigns, and often an added discount for being an early backer is also available. For card games, backer exclusive cards are often a good choice.
Another major issue with the campaign is the lack of visuals. It’s nice to see card examples and other visuals directly on the campaign. That being said, there is a print and play version of the game already available (graphics still in progress) so potential backers can really get a feel for the game. This somewhat offsets the beta tier being missing.
The final two issues are the price tag and the delivery date. Given the number of cards in the box, the goal is not the problem. However, $25,000 is a fairly high goal for a card game, especially for someone doing their first Kickstarter. The idea that the delivery date is so largely dependent on the stretch goals and how much funding the campaign receives is also a little troubling. Such a long wait is something that you want to avoid in a Kickstarter campaign unless the project is a major leap forward.