Following the North Star

Four years ago, we raised a bunch of money to make a video game version of our hit strategy game Evolution. Evolution is a super-thematic game where you evolve species by giving them traits, to help them adapt and survive in an ever-changing ecosystem:  We've had 5 people working full time on...

Two weeks ago, we made a call to get playtesters for the next game in the Evolution series, Oceans.  Our plan was to get 100 dedicated playtesters.  To our surprise we received over 1,200 submissions! 

The most massive project North Star Games has ever tackled is starting to surface. After going dark for nearly a year, the next stand-alone game in the Evolution series is finally coming up for air. 

Have an idea for a city we didn't include?  Here are some tips on how to mix Action Cards.  If you've come up with a unique combination of Action Cards that you enjoy playing with, share it with others by leaving a comment!

There was a time, let’s call it “the early 2000s”, when there was a sharp distinction between party games and strategy games. That's no longer true. A new kind of game has evolved that spans the gap.

Reviewers get to have all the fun, so we're turning our fans into reviewers. If you might want to get a pre-release game before it's published and review it, read on.

Sometimes two old ideas can combine to make a brand new one. There’s a strange alchemical magic in it. A good example is King of Tokyo, which combines Yahtzee with Kaiju. Now we have a game like that. It's called Most Wanted, which combines Poker with Old West outlaw shenanigans.

We've come to appreciate the value of doofiness, and that, in turn, has inspired us to explore other doofy game ideas. 

In the course of our exploration, we found a game of such profound, undiluted doofiness that we feel we have no choice but to publish it (possibly against our better judgement). I'm writing today with a sneak preview. 

At North Star Games, we love designing deep games. But it's getting harder to justify doing it, because depth may be out of fashion a little. So we've decided to evangelize for it. Here are three ways to understand the great pleasures of depth.