Designed by: Carl Chudyk
Innovation is a card game in which players build a civilisation from prehistory all the way through to the information age. Whilst the theme might be epic in scope, the gameplay is all about creating clever combinations of cards that work well together, and shoring up against your opponent’s plans.
The cards are divided in to ten ages, and players start with two cards from age one, one card in play and the other in hand. There are five suits (colours), and each card also contains a number of icons representing, broadly, concepts – it’s easier to get to grips with the game if you ignore the theme, as the icons are all quite clear; crowns, castles and trees, and in later ages; factories, clocks and lightbulbs.
On a player’s turn they take two actions, which can be: draw a new card from the current age deck, play a card from their hand, activate one of their cards in play, or score a point. From this fairly simple premise, the game quickly explodes into a wealth of possibilities, as a result of the dogmas – each card has one or two of these special abilities that can be activated, either to attack your opponents or to help yourself.
Innovation introduces some quite sophisticated ideas that may take traditional card players a few games to get their head around: cards can be used as several different components during the game, and cards played can be splayed (spread out) left, right or up, revealing more icons and making your ability to use dogmas more powerful. Your first few games are likely to be confusing and chaotic, but you’ll gradually begin to understand the structure of the game, and start to focus on achieving the win conditions. From then on the battles will become more tense, and each game will throw new challenges, and offer new possibilities, for hundreds of plays.
Innovation is a bit Tardis-like; a small box and a simple set of rules produce a deep and complex strategy game, which invested players will find extremely rewarding.
I love this game with two players - with three or four the chaos multiplies exponentially, and there's simply too much information to keep track of for me (though I hear the partnership game for four is excellent). There's an infinite set of possibilities here, and though it's not hugely thematic, if you imagine all of human history compressed into a 30 minute info-burst and injected straight into your brain, the effect is actually quite similar.
Innovation is very confrontational, and opponent's game effects can be quite devastating until you learn how to avoid or defend against them. Swearing at each other is inevitable.
Turns are very quick, but with a handful of cards, each with one or two special powers, it can sometimes take time evaluating your options. But many turns you'll already know exactly what you want to do.
This is undeniably a brain-burner - some of the core concepts take time to bed in, and the possibilities within any given game will be many and varied.
If it hooks you, you'll want to play Innovation many many times, and there will always be some new, unforeseen circumstance to tackle, or strategy to exploit.
2-4
Players
12+
Years
30-60
Mins
Sam says
Unlike Joe I've only actually played Innovation with four - we found it chaotic and if memory serves, slightly unbalanced. But Joe has developed a taste for it as a two-player and other friends agree that's when Innovation is at its best.