Inventions: Evolution of Ideas Review

A review copy of Inventions was provided by Eagle-Gryphon Games. Thoughts & opinions are my own.

When Vital Lacerda drops a new game on peoples’ doorsteps, the collective heavy Euro fans of the world pop their heads up like meerkats and take notice. Inventions: Evolution of Ideas (Inventions from hereon in) is the latest in his line of big-box, heavy games. Euros have a tendency to be a little abstract, but Vital has taken this to the nth degree with Inventions. It’s a game about civilisation, but instead of focusing on the traditional 4X aspects of other civ games, it focuses specifically on the inventions made throughout history. No surprise there, given the name of the game, but it’s an interesting angle to take, much like Carl Chudyk did with Innovation, but on a much grander scale. It could have fallen flat on its face, but it didn’t. It’s yet another fantastic game from the king of modern heavy games.

Necessity is the mother of invention

In Inventions, you play the roles of various nameless societies around the world. The passing of time is represented by the rounds of the game, and during that time you clever people have have ideas. These ideas, these concepts, are presented around the world where they will eventually become inventions. There’s a core flow to the game that revolves around this idea.

Cards come from a market to your hand, which can then be presented in different areas of the world, represented by the world map that occupies most of the board. Ideas become invented – not necessarily by the same person who suggested them – and the inventions are in turn shared with the world. Understanding this three-part cycle is central to the game, as everything else depends on and influences the ideas and inventions you’ll create.

In the mind of other designers that’s probably enough to be going on with, but not Mr Lacerda. No, in addition to this we need a whole other thing to tangle your synapses around. Your player board has a hex grid where your aspiration tiles get placed as you play the game. The puzzle here of cost vs benefit of placing tiles and understanding where to place them really puts me in mind of his previous game, On Mars (read my review of On Mars right here).

On top of all of this is the challenge of navigating the world. Yeah, no biggie, just global circumnavigation. Especially considering the opening round of the game represents the Stone Age. Regardless, in order to do things in locations such as presenting ideas or creating inventions, you need to have your citizen tokens in the areas linked to on the map. So not only are you trying to keep track of who has access to what from the knowledge display, you have to manage the travel and placement of your citizens, keep an eye on the ideas already out on the board that you could either invent or innovate on, manage your supply of citizens and scholars, and play the hex geometry puzzle on your own player board. Oh, I almost forgot the sheer anguish of choosing actions on the forums.

There is a lot going on, and that’s all before we start thinking about chaining actions.

Chain of command

At the top of your player board, there are these funky little wooden pieces with chain links screen printed on them. These are used for tracking and using chain actions, and chain actions are the part of Inventions that you’ll either love or hate. In my experience, most people have loved them, but I can see why some people might not. I’ll come back to this later.

The actions you perform in the game can come from lots of different sources. It’s not just about where your column goes on the forums. If the action has a pink ‘chain action’ icon on it, you can place one of your available chain tokens there to perform that action. That action may then lead to another chain action, which lets you do something else, and so on. It’s a clever concept which can be exploited by those with a smart enough head on their shoulders to take far more actions than their normal turns allow.

The weird thing for me, however, is that once players understand how chain actions work, they start working their turns out backwards. I’ve played Inventions more than five times now, and I’m still not sure how I feel about this. In a way, it’s really cool. It scratches that same itch that something like Hadrian’s Wall (read my review of that flip-and-write masterpiece here) does when you cross something off, and that lets you do something else, ad infinitum. But because Inventions is such a tight, heavy, intricately woven game the chaining often works in reverse.

What do I mean by that? Say for example you really want to take the Innovate action to cash in on someone else’s invention. If it was a legitimate move you could just perform that action by moving your column to the appropriate spot in the forum. If you have access to an Innovate action by virtue of chain actions though, your immediate thought turns to “What else can I do first?”. Now I’m sure there are some big old IQs out there who can figure this all out, or who have played the game 100 times and know it inside out, but your initial experience is likely to be one of “I’ll do all of these other things first and end with that chained action I really want”, performing the first actions just because they’re something you can do. It feels less like Charlie Day’s web of red wool from Always Sunny… and more like shoving your hand down the back of the sofa and hoping you get something cool out.

How heavy is too heavy?

Inventions is an unusual beast. When you compare the board to those of Vital’s other games like On Mars and Lisboa, it looks like there’s less going on. It’s not as busy. I’d argue that it’s actually heavier than both of those games though. In his other games, the planning required to take your actions is less involved. Take On Mars for example. The biggest thing you have to plan for is being in orbit or planetside. Yes, there are restrictions on the number of players who can be at each worker area, but even when a spot is full you can kick others out to take the action.

Inventions is far more restrictive. There are five rows called forums, each of which has two action spaces. Each player has three columns to place in each Era, so you place a column on the action you want to take. Simple. Except for the fact that if you have a column in a row already, then you can’t place another in that forum. So not only can you not take that action again, you also preclude yourself from taking the action next to it on that row. In your first game especially you’ll tear your hair out when you realise you’ve blocked yourself from carrying out your own plans, and have to come up with a plan B, then a plan C etc.

After a game or two, you get used to it and start to look further down the road for future actions, but it still adds a level of mental overhead you might not be used to. It could be that it’s a step too far, and I’d completely get that. If you’ve never played a heavy Lacerda game and are wondering whether Inventions is the best way to start, it might not be. I’d still recommend The Gallerist first, and if you want to know why I’ll point you towards my review of The Gallerist.

---

---

This isn’t me telling you not to play Inventions. Neither is it me saying that Inventions is too heavy. This is me letting you know that there is an awful lot going on and to make sure that you go in understanding that your brain might not like you very much after your first play.

Final thoughts

Let’s get the important stuff out of the way first. Inventions is a very, very good game, and I like it a lot. Thematically it’s actually pretty sound, despite the level of abstraction. The flow of time matches the relevant level of innovation and inventions, and I like the way you spread around the world to bring the ideas to life. That’s as far as theme goes though really. The tile puzzle on your player board is just a puzzle, it doesn’t represent anything, but this is a Euro game so we expect – nay encourage – this around these parts.

As you might expect with Vital’s games, there’s plenty of indirect interaction. Once an idea’s on the board it’s open season to get them invented, innovated and shared with the world. I really like the fact that multiple players can all get in on an invention and benefit from it. There’s a clever connection between your level on the shared Influence track and the number of chain actions available to you. At first it seems like Influence doesn’t really matter too much, but once you understand the value of chain actions it forces your hand to make sure you keep adding influence.

It almost goes without saying now, but it’d be criminal to not give a shout out to yet another Ian O’Toole masterpiece of art and graphic design. If you think his iconography is busy or overcomplicated, play a heavy game with bad graphic design and you’ll understand how good Ian’s work is. I should also highlight the fact that two-player games of Inventions require you to add a third, bot-type player to the game to try to replicate the feeling of players bumping into one another all over the game board, and to keep the ideas and inventions flowing. It’s a relatively low overhead to add to the game, but some people don’t like it.

Inventions is a great game. It’s a very expensive game, so make sure it’s one that will fit with your group, but if does, you’ll love it. It’s an ever-changing puzzle which your brain will simultaneously love and hate while you try to solve it.

You can buy Inventions: Evolution of Ideas right now from my retail partner Kienda. Remember to sign up at kienda.co.uk/punchboard for 5% off your first order of at least £60.