Oceans

Oceans is a nature-themed strategy board game published in 2020 by North Star Games. It is a game in the Evolution series. The game's development was funded via a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter. Gameplay Unlike its predecessor Evolution, in which players execute their turns in shared phases, in Oceans players take individual turns to create species by assembling trait cards. These creatures are released into an aquatic ecosystem where they must obtain food and avoid becoming prey to other creatures. These are represented by boards that can hold nine fish (each fish is a "population token"). During the game, the creature may evolve defenses against predators, and predators may evolve tactics to circumvent those defenses. Up to three trait cards can be used to evolve a species. The ecosystems are represented by one reef board and an ocean board with three zones filled with fish tokens. Each turn, the player uses one card to either evolve an extant species, to create a new one, or to migrate fish from one ocean box to another. They then feed one of their species, either by "grazing from the reef" ("foraging"), preying on another species ("attacking") or passively from the ocean ("gaining"). Finally, each species controlled by the player is aged, with one fish token removed from its board and added to the players score pile. The player then draws cards to fill a complement of four for their hand. If a species does not have sufficient fish on its board, it becomes extinct. If it exceeds the nine fish limit, it has overpopulated the ocean and half the fish tokens are removed from its board.