Darwinia - Review
So, amidst the craziness of exams, and spurred by this Strafe Left, I decided to start playing Darwinia again. I’d bought it on Steam two years ago, but after a crash and a lost saved game, I never got round to finishing it. But now I have, and am truly glad. It really is a beautiful game and a testament to Introversion that 4 guys sat in a room could design, program, test and release it. So, read on for some random stream-of-conscious thoughts about the game, or press back on your browser and go do something else, your choice. If I were you, I’d go back. Cause I’ve no idea how this thing is gonna turn out. I warn you know, it could get messy. Expect my trademark rambling and lack of coherence.
Darwinia I think, at its core, wants to be an Amiga game. It harks back to the glory days of the 8 and 16 bit eras, and plays like a mix between Syndicate, Cannon Fodder and Tron. Ok, well, it doesn’t play like Tron, but it sure takes a lot from the visual style of said film. The graphics are wonderfully retro; buildings are made up of simplistic polygonal primitives, and the ground wears its simplistic nature on its sleeve, not even bothering to hide its basic triangle strip nature. The units have a lovely pixelated quality to them, and they run rife with aliasing. But you know what? That’s ok. It just adds to the feel that you’re inside a network of ‘Protologic 68000’ machines from the ’80s.
The gameplay, like the graphics, is deceptively simple. On the surface, you point and you shoot. But once you get into it, you’re running programs, rescuing Darwinians, coordinating anti-viral attacks and suddenly it all clicks. I look forward to seeing how they expand on the gameplay basics laid here in Multiwania.
Oh, and that’s another thing to love about it. It’s so steeped in its own world. From trunk ports to task managers, pattern buffers to fractal trees, that you’re inside a computer is ingrained into every aspect of the game. And then there are the Space Invader style bombers that appear when you call in an air strike.
Story wise, its rather heartfelt, a tale of survival against insurmountable odds, and the near destruction of an entire (artificial) civilisation brought on by their own curiosity and desire to talk to ‘god’ (in their case, Dr. Sepulveda, their creator). During peaceful moments, Darwinians fill the sky with lanterns for each of their number who fell in battle. This, coupled with the way fallen souls slowly rise up into the air can create a panorama that is both majestic and touching.
You really do start to feel for every Darwinian that falls, and the bloodshed on the Pattern Buffer and Biosphere levels as Green Darwinians face off against Red is rather sobering. Oh, and you will quickly learn to hate Soul Destroyers, on multiple levels. On a gameplay standpoint, they’re buggers to kill, but from a story standpoint, they completely destroy any Darwinians they attack, soul and all, leaving behind nothing but a ghost.
So, to round up? Erm, it’s £10 on Steam. Go buy it. Support Introversion. If they continue to go from strength to strength, hopefully they’ll no longer be the last of the bedroom programmers.
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