Board game Evolution. Natural Selection (Evolution. Survival of the Fittest). Board game Correct games Evolution. Natural selection

Fundraising is underway to publish a localization of the American version of the domestic hit. =) The game had to receive such intricate regalia due to the fact that the very first, our “Evolution”, won the love of not only domestic, but also foreign players. And foreigners, in this case the American publisher North Star Games, for sale in their market, gave the game gloss and combed the gameplay so that there were as few obstacles as possible for getting to know as many players in the world as possible. And now “Evolution” returns to its native land. Read this article to see what we can expect from the game.

WE MEET BY CLOTHING.

Opening the box, we see a space completely filled with components. Many will notice that the working space of the box takes up a third of the total volume. As much as I have heard in my time of negativity like “they are selling us air”, “how much space on the shelf would be saved”, etc., I come to the same conclusion that such a box measuring 30x30cm is the right choice.

The first reason is psychological. If we are aimed at a wider audience, including not only experienced gamers, then it will be difficult for the buyer to force himself to spend 2,700 rubles (RRP) on a small box. Also, my numerous observations of players of varying degrees of involvement showed that a large box receives more attention and respect: a whole celebration is visible in the eyes of future participants when you carry the box to the table. =)

The second reason is ergonomic. The American publisher has already released a couple of add-ons, which means it is very possible for us to release it too. That’s when you’ll need the entire volume!

The third reason - ... well, you can’t, it’s just a crime, such beautiful cover do it on a small box. =)

The contents of the box are rich and varied. Here you will find suede bags, wooden cubes, food tokens, species boards (thick with holes), a watering field, and a dinosaur. The main attribute is, of course, evolution cards. All this wealth disposes the player, concentrates him and wins. =) The first pleasant shock blow, so to speak.

Let's go through the components in more detail. Tablets biological species with holes for cubes are designed to indicate the population size and body size of the animal, as well as the degree of feeding. Tablets of the type are one of the results of “combing” (read - optimization) of the game for the player: in the first version of the game, characterized by minimizing game components, the population and size parameters were marked with property cards. As a result, perception of the process was difficult. Now, additional components have been introduced for this purpose, which at a visual level help to quickly assess the situation on the table.

The rules booklet is very nice and is the size of a small magazine. What is important is that the whole process is laid out on the shelves, everything is clear from the first reading.

Players will need hint sheets, close in size to A4, only for the first game, when the order of the game and the properties of the cards have not yet been learned. If everything is clear on the side with properties, then on the reverse side there is an index of these properties with translation into scientific English. The authors suggest, as entertainment, to fantasize, give your species certain properties and, accordingly, name them scientifically.

But you can get confused during the game. =) For some reason, I immediately imagine the characters from the TV series “The Big Bang Theory” with a proprietary translation from Courage-Bombay and a similar dialogue:

I attack your Largo-nibl-prick with my Mega-swarma-nom.

You can't attack him, you're not big enough to break through his shell.

Yeah, well then I'll have to eat my little Digo-Peeps. =(

The food tokens here are double-sided: one side is for herbivores, the other is for predators. In principle, the game does not require strict use of the sides (your herbivorous jerboas can easily eat the leg of a brontosaurus on a “visual” level =)), but it’s good for the surroundings.

And finally, the cards. The story of the game begins with them, and the review of components will end with them. =) Property cards were and remain the main mechanism of game mechanics. Remove all other components and you will still be able to play this game (if you apply them according to the rules of the first, ascetic version). Also, property cards are the main visual component of the game and already at the viewing stage they begin to win the hearts of players. Graphic designer, Catherine Hamilton, created this group of masterpieces by hand, without the use of a computer, that is, the old fashioned way. And only then all the images were transferred to the computer.

Everything that was done by the American publisher, design and optimization, was done with one single purpose - to help the potential player get to the very center of the gameplay. May our publishers forgive me, we are only now beginning to understand on a subconscious level the importance of product presentation, and we have a long time to work in this direction. And who, if not the Americans, will do everything at the highest level?

But when you and I are captivated by the visual, tactile and aesthetic part of the game, it’s time for the gameplay...

HOW TO PLAY?

The goal of the game is to create and multiply your creations. We have unprecedented power in our hands - to create a variety of animals and adapt them to threats from outside. In order to give the game a competitive element between players, and not just play with an evolutionary constructor, a points system is provided that rewards the number of species, their population, set of properties and degree of satiety. Bigger, cooler and more abundant - this is the slogan of the game's goal.

Each player receives 1 tablet of a species with a preset population and size in the amount of 1, 3+1 (per tablet) property cards and a bag for storing “eaten food”. =) Each game round is divided into 4 phases: receiving cards, growing food, playing cards and feeding. In the first phase, the player receives 3 cards plus as many cards as different types he has at this point.

In the second phase, the lower right corner of the cards works, which indicates how much food will be at the watering hole if the card is played now.

All players choose a card and reveal it at the same time.

Using the example above, it turns out that in this round there will be 4+3-2=5 units of food at the watering hole.

Only non-predatory creatures can take food from a watering hole. Predators will have to look for food by attacking other species.

In the third phase, players take turns playing as many cards as they want from their hand in several ways.

Option 1 is to discard the cards and take another species board, marking the appearance of a new type of animal.

Option 2 is to discard a card and move one of the size or population markers on one of your species to 1.

Option 3 (I call it the main one) is to give one of your species an individual characteristic. To do this, you need to place a property card face down next to the board of one of your types.

Properties are revealed simultaneously after all players have made their move.

In the fourth and final phase, each species must be fed to survive. Herbivorous species Players can eat from the watering hole, taking turns carrying one food chip from there. In turn, you can feed the predator if there is someone to attack (an unprotected creature smaller than the predator itself). All food chips obtained as a result of this phase are placed in a personal bag, at the end each chip will be worth one victory point.

Due to the fact that predators roam everywhere, you can strive to create species that are very difficult to attack, such as the one in the photo above (a herd of horned jerboas or, in common parlance, FlokaLokiDiggers =)).

Or rely on searching for food at any cost and reproducing anywhere and anyhow. =)

Predators have a hard time in this game, since herbivores quickly adapt and catching game is quite a job.

When the deck of cards runs out, the last round is announced, after which we begin counting points. The player receives one point for:

Each food token in a bag;

Each surviving unit (the sum of the populations of all player species);

Each property card.

Whoever has more points wins.

IMPRESSION.

Intelligence! The main benefit that you should take away from what you read is that if you have a predator, try to endow it with intelligence. It was intelligence that made us, it was it in the game the main role. “Yeah, only with intelligence can you survive in this world” is not an idle phrase that has been heard more than once from the lips of those who have played “Evolution. Natural selection"Before our eyes, entire populations of predators perished due to the fact that other animals were very scrupulous about their safety. This is how to defeat a shell-like thing, if you don’t use your brain? How to deceive a horned one or an entire herd? With your head!!!

Capture and maintain interest. In terms of visual perception and general ergonomics, which made it possible to smoothly but confidently immerse beginners in the process, the game gets a solid “excellent”. When, after a game, players begin to carefully read the hint board and think about different combinations properties - this is already a victory for game mechanics. She was able to maintain and inflame interest in the game. Someone might say that this is the goal of any game (and not even a board game), but in this particular case it is more relevant, since before my eyes “Evolution” evolved into two significant leaps: 1) the appearance of the first version from Correct Games, " birth of the organism", and 2) the appearance of the NSG version, "birth of the shell".

As for interest in the game, I personally remained “hungry”: general impression The food was excellent, but it was not enough. Few properties can be imparted to a species, few properties become available in principle, little dynamics during the game due to the limited arrival of cards in the hand and their “melting” before our eyes, little drama in the extinction of herbivores due to lack of food at a watering hole, etc. When you start to think more globally (after about the third game =)), you catch yourself thinking that for the simplicity of the process you had to sacrifice a lot, because in essence “Evolution. Natural selection” is a struggle for the lives of herbivores and predators among themselves and nothing more . What about the fight against climate change? What is the interaction between aquatic, land and flying creatures? Where are our favorite microbes?

And here we come to two conclusions. First, the game will die without the add-on. Add-ons are simply vital for this game (and they already exist, they just need to be localized). We need to feed the “animals” (in the sense of us with a keen appetite for expanding the world).

HOUSE RULES (bonus).

I pointed out to you the nuances in the game, which were not enough for me, so I want to stimulate some of them on my own. I haven't had the opportunity to implement them yet, since we haven't yet exhausted the full potential of playing with the original rules, but in some future anything is possible.

1. The beginning of the game and the unwinding of the spiral of evolution turned out to be sluggish for me, so I would suggest giving players 2-3 species boards at the start. It will come into your hand right away more cards, and more people will have to be fed, which is why the food at the watering hole will be in approximately sufficient quantities to eat everything without a trace.
2. Why not add drama to the game with the help of a random factor, or, more commonly, cubes? For example, a predator attacks a defenseless creature, both roll dice in an amount equal to the size of the species. If the predator has a higher value on one of the dice than the prey, then it eats, and if not, then it does not. =) Or it attacks the armored one in the same way, but the victim rolls 4 more dice. The addition of such a random factor inspired me documentary, where successful escapes of victims from predators were shown. Above complete system interactions will have to be thought about. By the way, in order not to use anything beyond what is in the box, instead of cubes you can use property cards, or rather, the numbers of food on them.

For this I bow out. Thank you for your attention and special thanks to those who read this in its entirety. =)

Natural selection is the driving factor of evolution. Mechanism of action of selection. Forms of selection in populations (I.I. Shmalgauzen).

Natural selection- the process by which in a population the number of individuals with maximum fitness (the most favorable traits) increases, while the number of individuals with unfavorable traits decreases. In the light of the modern synthetic theory of evolution, natural selection is considered as the main reason for the development of adaptations, speciation and the origin of supraspecific taxa. Natural selection is the only known cause of adaptations, but not the only reason evolution. Maladaptive causes include genetic drift, gene flow, and mutations.

The term "Natural selection" was popularized by Charles Darwin when he compared this process with artificial selection, the modern form of which is selective breeding. The idea of ​​comparing artificial and natural selection is that in nature the selection of the most “successful”, “best” organisms also occurs, but in this case the role of “evaluator” of the usefulness of properties is not a person, but the environment. In addition, the material for both natural and artificial selection is small hereditary changes that accumulate from generation to generation.

Mechanism of natural selection

In the process of natural selection, mutations are fixed that increase the fitness of organisms. Natural selection is often called a "self-evident" mechanism because it follows from such simple facts, How:

Organisms produce more offspring than can survive;

There is heritable variation in the population of these organisms;

Organisms with different genetic traits have different survival rates and ability to reproduce.

Such conditions create competition between organisms for survival and reproduction and are the minimum necessary conditions for evolution through natural selection. Thus, organisms with hereditary traits that give them a competitive advantage are more likely to pass them on to their offspring than organisms with hereditary traits that do not have such an advantage.

The central concept of the concept of natural selection is the fitness of organisms. Fitness is defined as an organism's ability to survive and reproduce, which determines the size of its genetic contribution to the next generation. However, the main thing in determining fitness is not the total number of descendants, but the number of descendants with a given genotype (relative fitness). For example, if the offspring of a successful and rapidly reproducing organism are weak and do not reproduce well, then the genetic contribution and therefore the fitness of that organism will be low.

If any allele increases the fitness of an organism more than other alleles of this gene, then with each generation the share of this allele in the population will increase. That is, selection occurs in favor of this allele. And vice versa, for less beneficial or harmful alleles, their share in populations will decrease, that is, selection will act against these alleles. It is important to note that the influence of certain alleles on the fitness of an organism is not constant - when environmental conditions change, harmful or neutral alleles can become beneficial, and beneficial ones harmful.

Natural selection for traits that can vary over some range of values ​​(such as the size of an organism) can be divided into three types:

Directional selection- changes in the average value of a trait over time, for example an increase in body size;

Disruptive selection- selection for extreme values ​​of a trait and against average values, for example, large and small body sizes;

Stabilizing selection- selection against extremes characteristic values, which leads to a decrease in the variance of the trait.

A special case of natural selection is sexual selection, the substrate of which is any trait that increases the success of mating by increasing the attractiveness of the individual to potential partners. Traits that have evolved through sexual selection are especially noticeable in the males of some animal species. Characteristics such as large horns and bright colors, on the one hand, can attract predators and reduce the survival rate of males, and on the other hand, this is balanced by the reproductive success of males with similar pronounced characteristics.

Selection can operate at different levels of organization, such as genes, cells, individual organisms, groups of organisms, and species. Moreover, selection can simultaneously act on different levels. Selection at levels above the individual, such as group selection, can lead to cooperation.

Forms of natural selection

There are different classifications of selection forms. A classification based on the nature of the influence of forms of selection on the variability of a trait in a population is widely used.

Driving selection- a form of natural selection that operates when directed changing conditions external environment. Described by Darwin and Wallace. In this case, individuals with traits that deviate in a certain direction from the average value receive advantages. In this case, other variations of the trait (its deviations in the opposite direction from the average value) are subject to negative selection. As a result, in a population from generation to generation there is a shift in the average value of the trait in a certain direction. In this case, the pressure of driving selection must correspond to the adaptive capabilities of the population and the rate of mutational changes (otherwise, environmental pressure can lead to extinction).

A classic example of driving selection is the evolution of color in the birch moth. The color of the wings of this butterfly imitates the color of the lichen-covered bark of trees on which it spends the daylight hours. Obviously, such a protective coloration was formed over many generations of previous evolution. However, with the beginning of the industrial revolution in England, this device began to lose its importance. Atmospheric pollution has led to massive death of lichens and darkening of tree trunks. Light butterflies against a dark background became easily visible to birds. Beginning in the mid-19th century, mutant dark (melanistic) forms of butterflies began to appear in birch moth populations. Their frequency increased rapidly. By the end of the 19th century, some urban populations of the birch moth consisted almost entirely of dark forms, while rural populations continued to be dominated by light forms. This phenomenon was called industrial melanism. Scientists have found that in polluted areas, birds are more likely to eat light-colored forms, and in clean areas, dark ones. The introduction of air pollution restrictions in the 1950s caused natural selection to reverse course again, and the frequency of dark forms in urban populations began to decline. They are almost as rare these days as they were before the Industrial Revolution.

Driving selection occurs when the environment changes or adapts to new conditions when the range expands. It preserves hereditary changes in a certain direction, moving the reaction rate accordingly. For example, during the development of soil as a habitat, various unrelated groups of animals developed limbs that turned into burrowing limbs.

Stabilizing selection- a form of natural selection in which its action is directed against individuals with extreme deviations from the average norm, in favor of individuals with an average expression of the trait. The concept of stabilizing selection was introduced into science and analyzed by I. I. Shmalgauzen.

Many examples of the action of stabilizing selection in nature have been described. For example, at first glance it seems that the greatest contribution to the gene pool of the next generation should be made by individuals with maximum fertility. However, observations of natural populations of birds and mammals show that this is not the case. The more chicks or cubs in the nest, the more difficult it is to feed them, the smaller and weaker each of them is. As a result, individuals with average fertility are the most fit.

Selection toward the mean has been found for a variety of traits. In mammals, very low-weight and very high-weight newborns are more likely to die at birth or in the first weeks of life than average-weight newborns. Taking into account the size of the wings of sparrows that died after a storm in the 50s near Leningrad showed that most of them had wings that were too small or too large. And in this case, the average individuals turned out to be the most adapted.

Most widely famous example This polymorphism is sickle cell anemia. This severe blood disease occurs in people homozygous for the mutant hemoglobin allele ( Hb S) and leads to their death at an early age. In most human populations, the frequency of this allele is very low and approximately equal to the frequency of its occurrence due to mutations. However, it is quite common in areas of the world where malaria is common. It turned out that heterozygotes for Hb S have higher resistance to malaria than homozygotes for the normal allele. Thanks to this, in populations inhabiting malarial areas, heterozygosity for this allele, which is lethal in homozygotes, is created and stably maintained.

Stabilizing selection is a mechanism for the accumulation of variability in natural populations. The outstanding scientist I.I. Shmalgauzen was the first to draw attention to this feature of stabilizing selection. He showed that even in stable conditions of existence neither natural selection nor evolution ceases. Even if it remains phenotypically unchanged, the population does not stop evolving. Its genetic makeup is constantly changing. Stabilizing selection creates genetic systems that ensure the formation of similar optimal phenotypes on the basis of a wide variety of genotypes. Genetic mechanisms such as dominance, epistasis, complementary gene action, incomplete penetrance and other means of hiding genetic variation owe their existence to stabilizing selection.

Thus, stabilizing selection, sweeping aside deviations from the norm, actively shapes genetic mechanisms that ensure the stable development of organisms and the formation of optimal phenotypes based on various genotypes. It ensures the stable functioning of organisms in a wide range of fluctuations in external conditions familiar to the species.

Disruptive selection- a form of natural selection in which conditions favor two or more extreme variants (directions) of variability, but do not favor the intermediate, average state of a trait. As a result, several new forms may appear from one original one. Darwin described the action of disruptive selection, believing that it underlies divergence, although he could not provide evidence of its existence in nature. Disruptive selection contributes to the emergence and maintenance of population polymorphism, and in some cases can cause speciation.

One of the possible situations in nature in which disruptive selection comes into play is when a polymorphic population occupies a heterogeneous habitat. Wherein different shapes adapt to various ecological niches or subniches.

The formation of seasonal races in some weeds is explained by the action of disruptive selection. It was shown that the timing of flowering and seed ripening in one of the species of such plants - meadow rattle - is extended almost throughout the summer, with most of the plants flowering and fruiting in mid-summer. However, in hay meadows, those plants that have time to flower and produce seeds before mowing, and those that produce seeds at the end of summer, after mowing, benefit. As a result, two races of rattle are formed - early and late flowering.

Disruptive selection was carried out artificially in experiments with Drosophila. The selection was carried out according to the number of bristles; only individuals with a small and large number of bristles were retained. As a result, from about the 30th generation, the two lines diverged very much, despite the fact that the flies continued to interbreed with each other, exchanging genes. In a number of other experiments (with plants), intensive crossing prevented the effective action of disruptive selection.

Sexual selection- This is natural selection for reproductive success. The survival of organisms is an important, but not the only component of natural selection. Another important component is attractiveness to individuals of the opposite sex. Darwin called this phenomenon sexual selection. “This form of selection is not determined by the struggle for existence in the relations of organic beings with each other or with external conditions, but by competition between individuals of the same sex, usually males, for the possession of individuals of the other sex.” Traits that reduce the viability of their hosts can emerge and spread if the advantages they provide for reproductive success are significantly greater than their disadvantages for survival.

Two hypotheses about the mechanisms of sexual selection are common.

According to the “good genes” hypothesis, the female “reasons” as follows: “If this male, despite his bright plumage and a long tail, somehow managed not to die in the clutches of a predator and survive to puberty, then, therefore, he has good genes that allowed him to do this. This means that he should be chosen as a father for his children: he will pass on his good genes to them.” By choosing colorful males, females are choosing good genes for their offspring.

According to the “attractive sons” hypothesis, the logic of female choice is somewhat different. If brightly colored males, for whatever reason, are attractive to females, then it is worth choosing a brightly colored father for his future sons, because his sons will inherit the brightly colored genes and will be attractive to females in the next generation. Thus, there is a positive Feedback, which leads to the fact that from generation to generation the brightness of the plumage of males increases more and more. The process continues to grow until it reaches the limit of viability.

In the choice of males, females are no more and no less logical than in all their other behavior. When an animal feels thirsty, it does not reason that it should drink water in order to restore the water-salt balance in the body - it goes to a watering hole because it feels thirsty. In the same way, females, when choosing bright males, follow their instincts - they like bright tails. All those to whom instinct suggested a different behavior, all of them did not leave offspring. Thus, we were discussing not the logic of females, but the logic of the struggle for existence and natural selection - a blind and automatic process that, acting constantly from generation to generation, has formed all the amazing diversity of shapes, colors and instincts that we observe in the world of living nature .

Positive and negative selection

There are two forms of natural selection: Positive And Cut-off (negative) selection.

Positive selection increases the number of individuals in a population that have useful traits that increase the viability of the species as a whole.

Eliminating selection eliminates from a population the vast majority of individuals that carry traits that sharply reduce viability under given environmental conditions. Using selection selection, highly deleterious alleles are removed from the population. Also, individuals with chromosomal rearrangements and a set of chromosomes that sharply disrupt the normal functioning of the genetic apparatus can be subjected to cutting selection.

The role of natural selection in evolution

Charles Darwin believed natural selection to be the main driving force of evolution; in the modern synthetic theory of evolution, it is also the main regulator of the development and adaptation of populations, the mechanism of the emergence of species and supraspecific taxa, although the accumulation of information on genetics in the late 19th - early 20th centuries, in particular the discovery of a discrete nature inheritance of phenotypic traits has led some researchers to deny the importance of natural selection and, as an alternative, to propose concepts based on assessing the genotype mutation factor as extremely important. The authors of such theories postulated not a gradual, but a very fast (over several generations) spasmodic nature of evolution (mutationism of Hugo de Vries, saltationism of Richard Goldschmidt and other less well-known concepts). The discovery of known correlations among the characters of related species (the law of homological series) by N. I. Vavilov prompted some researchers to formulate the next “anti-Darwinian” hypotheses about evolution, such as nomogenesis, bathmogenesis, autogenesis, ontrogenesis and others. In the 1920s to 1940s in evolutionary biology, those who rejected Darwin's idea of ​​evolution by natural selection (sometimes theories that emphasized natural selection were called "selectionist" theories) saw a revival of interest in this theory due to the revision of classical Darwinism in the light the relatively young science of genetics. The resulting synthetic theory of evolution, often incorrectly called neo-Darwinism, is, among other things, based on a quantitative analysis of the frequency of alleles in populations changing under the influence of natural selection. There are debates where people with a radical approach, as an argument against the synthetic theory of evolution and the role of natural selection, argue that "discoveries of recent decades in various fields scientific knowledge- from molecular biology with her theory of neutral mutationsMotoo Kimura And paleontology with her theory of punctuated equilibrium Stephen Jay Gould And Niles Eldridge (wherein view understood as a relatively static phase evolutionary process) before mathematicians with her theorybifurcations And phase transitions- indicate the insufficiency of the classical synthetic theory of evolution to adequately describe all aspects biological evolution» . The discussion about the role of various factors in evolution began more than 30 years ago and continues to this day, and it is sometimes said that “evolutionary biology (meaning the theory of evolution, of course) has come to the need for its next, third synthesis.”

More than a million species of living beings inhabit all corners of our planet. Charles Darwin's theory of evolution explains the reasons for their stunning biodiversity.

Thanks to natural selection, individuals that are better adapted to their environment survive and pass on their beneficial features descendants. Now, after thousands and even millions of years, we can only marvel at how something like this could have happened naturally!

In Evolution, you yourself become part of the mechanism of nature and can see with your own eyes how your animals evolve, adapt and reproduce, or die out, losing in competition with more successful and efficient species.

Next, we will briefly tell you how to play Evolution. Of course, this is not a verbatim retelling game rules. You'll get an idea of ​​how the game plays, and for the subtleties and nuances, refer to the rules, which you can download on this page! At the very beginning, each player receives a bag for storing consumed food tokens and a tablet of one type of animal. The player places two wooden cubes in convenient recesses on the tablet: these are the basic values populations And body size.

The course of the game is divided into rounds. At the beginning of the round, each player draws 3 cards from the properties deck, plus one card for each type of animal. Accordingly, at the beginning of the game these are four cards, since each player has one type of animal.

There is a number in the lower right corner of each card. Players place one card face down on the watering hole board. These cards will later determine how much food will be available for sustenance.
Players can place the remaining cards, again face down, near their animal boards. Cards can also be discarded to gain more animal species or to increase the population and body size of existing species.
Then comes the moment of truth! All cards laid face down on the table are revealed. Players are recognized Yu t, how much food is at the watering hole. The properties they assigned to their animals using cards come into play.
And then it turns out that...

There is not enough food for everyone. Animals with long neck manage to grab food before others. Cooperation makes it possible for two or more species to feed themselves at once. Gluttonous animals “eat” two tokens at a time. Any tricks are used! Yes, yes, all this happens due to the property cards that players have distributed between species!

But that's not all. It turns out that one of the animals became a predator (or maybe more, or all remained herbivores). The predator can no longer consume plant foods from a watering hole. His food is other species!

But someone has learned to climb and is hiding in the treetops, and if the predator has not developed the same property, he will not be able to reach the climber. Another animal has grown a strong shell, and someone has gained such body mass that he doesn’t care about a small predator... unless he gains weight or starts hunting in packs!

The predator reduces the population of other animals by receiving meat food, or dies itself. Herbivores that do not get plant food lose their population, or even die out. The same thing happens in living nature! Survival of the fittest.

Then all the “eaten” food tokens are sent to the players’ bags, and a new round begins.

Attribute cards assigned to different animal species remain with them. Each animal can have up to three attributes, and players must choose how to evolve their pets. If necessary, properties can be changed by replacing them with new cards.
The game ends when the attribute deck runs out. Players count victory points. They are given for tokens of food eaten, for the population of surviving animals, and for the property cards assigned to them. Thus, the player whose species has proven itself to be the most efficient during the evolutionary process wins the game!

"Natural selection is not equal ( ≠ ) evolution". This is an important “inequality” that everyone should be aware of. Christians must understand this so that they do not allow themselves to be led astray. This should be a reminder to evolutionists that they still have a lot of work to do to be able to claim that they have an evolutionary mechanism.

How often do we hear examples of natural selection used as evidence for evolution. Changes in size, shape, color, and skin patterns are often demonstrated as evolution's honor roll. This misconception tactic has been debunked so often, but surprisingly it is still used and people still fall for it.

The term itself should alert people that something important is missing. When we talk about "selection" in our Everyday life, we always choose from something that already exists. Think about choosing cards from a deck. You can choose cards from a deck every second of your life, but all you can count on are different combinations of the same cards. It is impossible to create anything new in this way - only shuffled cards, or removed cards, or added cards from another deck.

When we talk about "selection" in our daily lives, we are always choosing from something that already exists.

When an illusionist asks you to choose a card from a deck and surprises you with something new, you understand that this is a trick, a sleight of hand. We need to learn to spot this evolutionist trick when they claim to have pulled something “new” from the deck. Selection always occurs from an already existing set or range. He doesn't create anything new.

This illustration applies to "selection" in the context of biology. The omniscient Creator knew about different environments habitats to which His creatures would have to adapt after the Fall and the Curse, and in particular after Noah's Flood, in order to survive. He incorporated into the genetic information of each kind of creature a wide variety of variations in their structure and appearance. Including those features that influence interaction with the environment: the size of the entire organism (plant, animal or human); the size of individual organs, limbs or members such as beaks or noses; leaf size, skin color, length, texture and color of hair or feathers. All these and many other variations were programmed into the DNA of the creatures He created so that when populations of various genera found themselves in a new environment, the expression of certain traits would allow the individuals to survive in the new conditions. Individuals with these variations then pass them on to their offspring. When variations and the habitats that contribute to their expression are sufficiently different, we can distinguish distinct “species.” No new information is ever added in this selection process. It may be saved or lost, but never acquired.

Edward Blyth (1810-1873), a chemist and creationist zoologist, wrote about natural selection some 25 years before Darwin misappropriated it to support his theory of evolution. Blyth clearly saw in this remarkable phenomenon the foresight of the all-wise, omniscient and skillful Creator God.

Knowing God's love for beauty (reflected in men and women created in His image), we can assume that God likely also provided for the impressive diversity of birds, fish, dogs and cats that we have created through "artificial selection." solely for the sake of “aesthetic pleasure”, and not for survival.

But regardless of whether variation is naturally selected environment, or artificially by breeders for a specific trait, this is still just a “selection” from an existing genetic information. Nothing new is being created.

Evolution desperately requires “natural invention,” “natural innovation,” and “natural creation.”

Patent law requires that an invention must have some degree of non-obviousness, an “inventive step,” in order for it to be patentable. Minor changes to the design of an existing product cannot be patented. Many litigation on patent rights were conducted specifically regarding this point. Evolution also requires this "level of ingenuity", that is, completely new organs or body parts created thanks to new information in DNA that was not previously there. Despite the enormous resources being thrown into evolutionary research in universities and research institutions, natural selection has never been shown to produce this kind of "step of ingenuity."

Modern Darwinists point to mutations as the mechanism that creates innovations from which “natural selection” selects. Evolutionists should then focus on mutation to defend their theory rather than on "natural selection". When asked for examples of new genetic information or new organs created by mutations, they usually point to flightless island beetles, or flightless cormorants from Galapagos Islands. The problematic nature of these examples is obvious. Although they confirm that changes can indeed benefit creatures in specific, very unusual conditions habitat, nothing “new” is added to their DNA or body parts. They are an example losses or damage existing genetic information.