Have you ever seen a game that's so ugly, so inaccessible, so strange that you can't imagine playing it' Darwinia fit that description, at first glance... but something brought me back. I don't know if it was the style, the craving for another strategy game, or what, but I eventually downloaded the demo. Months later, it's increasingly evident that Introversion Software was a group with a vivid dream and the tools to spread it to the world.
On your first entrance to Darwinia, it's hard to tell what to do. The 'Virtual Theme Park' is bright and odd with no real obvious markings. Quickly, Dr. Sepulveda (the architect of this computer world) comes online and gives you the rundown'the utopian place called Darwinia is overrun by virii and you're tasked with cleaning it.
This then leaves you mostly alone in a world where an incidental (but great) soundtrack and retro graphics you'll grow to love. At this point, your foot is dipped in, testing the waters of Darwinia. It's not as cold and inhospitable as it first seemed.
Next on the laundry list is, of course, to locate and clean the viral infection from the system. As many sci-fi solutions go, the firearms need to come out. Hold down ALT to bring up the Task Manager, and note the round area in the center of the screen. If you move your mouse to the left, a display of the available programs and research are available. To the right, the missions and objective pop up. In the center, however, is a round area that will prove to be what you look at most.
The gesture area in the task manager is a unique interface that can't be commended enough. Instead of having to click through multiple menus, Darwinia puts you through the task of learning and utilizing simple gestures and shapes with the mouse to build objects in the virtual world. Draw a triangle, and you'll have summoned your first squad. A pi shape of sorts brings up an engineer, who looks and moves somewhat like a Recognizer from Darwinia's stylistic cousin Tron.
Once you've created a squad, you'll want to march forward into the heat of battle to take out various viral infections. Basic virii are nothing more than glowing pink triangles that snake their way through the terrain. Mutations between the viral infections and insects pop up eventually, with a much tougher and deadly force'instead of being a hundred fast-moving creatures that vanish with one hit, suddenly you're dealing with single fast moving creatures that don't go away until you've laid into them with a heavy amount of laser fire and grenades.
Fights in Darwinia take a little bit of aim, a little bit of skill, and a little bit of strategy. Moving squads around is much like any real time strategy game'you left-click where you want them to be, and they walk to that point. The right mouse button fires the lasers your squad carries, and if you click the left mouse button while they're firing lasers, secondary weapons can be thrown. It takes a little while, but eventually you'll be able to strafe across the terrain raining destruction upon the virii.
Hopefully your work was not for naught, as virii usually congregate around research materials or control towers. When a clear path opens, your engineer can float in and assimilate the item into your control. While this is a fairly simple task, engineers can sometimes have problems interfacing with the towers. Towers are checkpoints that serve as forward strategic bases of sorts, so it's somewhat annoying when you can't get your engineer in position to take control.
If you take another look at the task manager, to the left, you'll probably notice that research points should be starting to fill up in a skill. If you click on a certain skill, it forces the research (experience points) to load into that specific bar. Doing such is essential, as higher levels of research lead to higher functionalities of that section. Another level in 'Squad' gives you an extra squad member, another in 'Laser' gives you a more powerful laser, and so on.
Outside of destroying enemies and doing basic engineer work, the other basic task of Darwinia is to save the Darwinians. Darwinians are small stick figures that both occur in the wild and can be manufactured by refining the souls of your fallen enemies. As they lack intelligence and direction, you're tasked with promoting one to the officer class. Draw a checkmark in the gesture area, then click on a single Darwinian. It will turn gold and become a leader of sorts'right click on an area to set a meeting point, and run him around to the other Darwinians. They will then follow his direction to rescue.
Darwinia is a realization of a dream in digital space. Like others in its stylistic brood'Rez, Golf', Amplitude'it eschews realism for an imagination-bounding landscape that's pure eye candy. Like all great experiences, however, it ends too soon. A campaign of just a handful of missions doesn't last long, but an active mod community helps offset that. Nonetheless, Darwinia stands above most games in design as an essential title for the PC.
Click Here to head to the official site, and give the game a try for yourself.
