Day 77 - Evolve
Idle Clicker, Pig Game, Snake? Snake!? Snaaaake! ·
Skeeter’s Take:
Always nice to see a fellow github website user!
Evolve is a clicker game that (pun fully intended) evolves the further the player gets into it.
I start my journey as a simple protoplasm in the prehistoric era, floating along in primordial ooze gathering RNA and DNA, building up my cells to make my big break.
One thing I appreciate about Evolve is it tells you the exact amount of time you’d have to wait for the upgrade to become available through the auto-gathered resources:
Eventually, I save up enough RNA and DNA for my first big upgrade. Part of the reason I love playing video games is they allow me to live out crazy fantasies I could never even dream of doing in real life:
I end up receiving a progress bar towards Evolving.
I continue to Sigma grind my way up towards evolving into a sentient being.
Upon receiving sentience, I am given several choices of what I can evolve into - animal, plant, or fungi:
Being the basic bitch I am, I choose “animal”. After some more grinding, I choose to evolve into the insectoid branch of the animal tree, evolving me into these dope-ass scorpion beings called Scorpids:
I am assuming each branch of plant, animal, and fungi has their own subsequent branch that you could choose from. I’m already pretty baffled at the depth of Evolve and how many different paths I could take. Then, Evolve surprises me again by completely changing the game on me:
As quickly as my protoplasmic ass evolved into stinger-people, Evolve changed up on me too. Instead of the fairly straightforward clicker game I was just playing, it became a city builder game without the building and a lot less micromanaging. The player now has access to chopping wood, hitting stone, and growing crops. It is the player’s responsibility to delegate tasks to the workers of the city:
The Government tab you see on the left allows you to attack foreign powers with your battalion. The player even gets to select what kind of government they want (selecting Oligarchy gave me access to the very ominous “Start Revolution” button).
Like many city building games, it is also the player’s responsibility to manage morale of their civilization - out of food? The civies aren’t going to like that!
AND, if that wasn’t enough for you, an event log even gets added. Here the player is prompted with random encounters that happen as they play. The effects of these events differ from good to bad. Sometimes your scientists wake up in a good mood and get inspired, sometimes you get raided and lose some coin from the coffers.
Here is about where I left off. I would like to stress - I have evolved a single time and already unlocked so much depth to this game. A city builder/manager hidden in a clicker game? That’s crazy. I didn’t even mention the weather/date system, and briefly mentioned combat. I feel like I’ve hardly even scraped the crust of Evolve and anticipate it “evolving” further. What’s here is solid, even if the progress feels a little slow to me. Pachincremental seemed to find the perfect balance that right when I was starting to get bored watching my balls bounce around the side screen, I’d have an upgrade to click. It didn’t feel sluggish. Evolve feels very slow comparatively. It feels like it was designed to be played over a long span of time, and I like my gratification a bit more “instant”. I do have one complaint though, “Needs more flashing, bouncing, colorful pachinko balls”.
Recommend: Yes
Replay Percentage Chance: 50%
Time Played: 1 Hour
Sam’s Take:
After playing this for an embarrassingly long amount of time, I sadly have to announce that it slows down to an absolute crawl after a while. I chose to become fungi people, and my upgrade structure looks nearly identical to Skeeter’s, which is pretty disappointing for what seems to be the only major branch in the game. After that first choice of what to evolve into and major unfolding into a new clicker, it seems like Evolve runs out of tricks pretty quickly. For the last hour I’ve been in a cycle of queuing up 10 minutes worth of activities, then sitting on my ass doing nothing. To some the slow clicky grind might be appealing as a background activity, but I crave just a little more excitement in my clickers.
It doesn’t help that Evolve is directly comparable to A Dark Room, which is a strikingly similar unfolding autoclicker, except it transformers three or four times throughout its runtime, and has more flavorful and frequent events.
Evolve isn’t one of the many microtransaction infinite prestige auto clickers that exist out there on the net, but unfortunately, it’s too slow and stagnant to match up to its namesake.
Recommend: I recommend A Dark Room
Replay Percentage Chance: 49%
Time Played: 2 Hours
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