From the designer's web site: The Evolution Game is a board game for two, three or four players, which was inspired by the concept of biological evolution. During the course of the game, your species will compete for territory with other species. As the environmental conditions change, it will face plagues, endemic disease, starvation, natural disasters and global catastrophes and may even succumb to total extinction. It will take advantage of mutation within its gene pool to establish itself in a series of ecological niches, thereby surviving through the successive stages of the geological sequence from the Precambrian (the dawn of life) to the Pleistocene (i.e. the present day).