Arachno Evo

Welcome to the fight for arachnid survival. The lives of arachnids are never easy, and surviving is always part of a complex and never ending game of hunting, eating, growing, evolving and learning. In Arachno Evo you will step into the shoes of a Spider from one of these four different species - Black Widows, Tarantulas, Jumping Spiders, or Spiny Orbweavers, and will be competing with the other spiders to be the fittest at the end of the game - ensuring the continuation of your species.

Hunting, gathering resources, stealing other spiders' egg sacs, gathering knowledge and undergoing mutations will be the keys to survival. But, don't forget to ensure that some of your offspring comes to life to perpetuate your evolved traits and rule the arachnid realm. Each spider species will compete to collect protein, dna strands, new knowledge, new tools, silk and steal other spiders offspring. Every piece of scrap you collect may be the little advantage that will get you one step closer to domination.

Arachno Evil is a tableau and engine building, tile and set collection competitive game for 1 to 4 players that is played in rounds with five phases each:

In the PRODUCTION phase you will be running your engine to generate resources based upon your current knowledge base (the engine is built on your tableau). The second phase is the RESOURCES COLLECTION phase during which you will collect additional resources (tiles) that got caught in the central spider web that urdergoing constant change while you and your competitors try to control the best sectors of the web. Then get into the KNOWLEDGE GATHERING phase when you will invest your generated and collected resources into learning new abilities and adding them to your tableau - at the same time, you will be trying to breed your offspring. ELIMINATING FUTURE COMPETITION is the fourth and the cruelest phase of the round, it is during this phase that you will steal other spiders' egg sacs and make sure future competition to your offspring is kept to a minimum. Stolen egg sacs may be put to use in two different manners, as protein ingestion for you to open new spaces in your knowledge base (your tableau) or as war trophies added to your set collection. The fifth phase is MAINTENANCE, during which you will discard any resources collected from the web (tiles) that won't fit in your limited inventory, replenish items and refresh exhausted elements of your tableau.

—description from the designer Alexandre C. Serpa