Evolotionary War

Evolotionary War (a misspelling of "Evolutionary War") is a turn-based strategy game by Grant Schindler of Phlogiston Software. Two players face off on an 8x8 grid like chess, but each piece is an organism with its own genetic profile, and pieces can asexually reproduce slightly altered copies of themselves between moves.

Chess, with Genes

Each organism on the board carries traits for strength, intelligence, speed, and fertility. Those numbers govern combat, movement, and the chance that a unit will spawn offspring, so the population mix on each side drifts as the match unfolds.

Three Actions Per Turn

On a turn a player can shift a piece, attack an opposing organism, or trigger reproduction. Play continues until one side's active organisms have been completely eliminated, making positional play and breeding strategy equally important.

Late Classic Mac Release

Version 1.0 was built for Mac OS 9, with version 1.1 following for the early Mac OS X releases. The PPC binary places it at the tail end of the classic Mac shareware era, when small experimental designs like this one still circulated through sites like Macintosh Garden and the Info-Mac archives.

Phlogiston Software

Phlogiston Software was Schindler's solo shareware label, used to release a handful of small Mac titles around 2000. Evolutionary War is the studio's most archived release.