Darwinia - 10000th Anniversary Edition

Darwinia is a greart genre busting game. What if, let's say hypothetically, you kind of like the idea behind RTS games but they bore you to tears at the same time. What if you were thinking to yourself one morning "Gosh darn it I really like the exciting parts of RTS games but if I have to build one more base or cut down one more tree I'm gonna go postal and go on a bloody rampage at the shopping mall with a jar of vaseline and a cricket bat". Like me I'm sure you have that thought all the time but gladly I can now put down that cricket bat and put that jar of vaseline back in the cupboard. Darwinia is that game...RTS action with an arcade pace and neat retro graphics that actually enhance the game. Tron meets dawn of war meets space invaders. I alrady own multiwinia (the multiplayer version) so im not sure if i need Darwinia but I can truly recommend this game. Yes it's a 40 meg download but theres lots of memorable play for your 40 megs. The only reason though that I seem to be the only one giving this game 4 out of 5 stars is that GOG have gotten the price point wrong...partly becasue it still is a 40 meg download afterall and to be honest this game really is a $5.99 game (multiwinia would be the $9.99 equivalent but its not here on gog)...You need to work out that price point gog..dont forget that back in the day this was a free game before it got picked up....if you spend $9.99 you wont be wasitng your money....you'll still get hours of fun. But wait for the sale....as soon as it comes down in price to $5.99 then buy. buy. buy !

A sky like Tron, flyers like Space Invaders, enemies like Centerpides and an overall minimalistic presentation. You stumble into Darwinia a digital playground that has been infected by an evil virus that turned most of the artificial life into monsters. So you are to help restoring the small digital souls into normal darwinians by killing the monsters, retrieve their "souls" and refine them ... but wait: first you got nothing. No big lasers, no motars, bazookas, air strikes. No refinery and no transports ... but you can find these techs and develop better versions. It plays fairly straight: summon a squad (a unit of 3 to 6 guys that do exactly what you want them to do) at the entering point and hunt enemies down. From time to time you conquer a new bulding or transportation point where you can summon troops from then on. Command & conquer - I would call it. A special treat are some details the developers made: Everytime you start the game you get a random intro, all little intros like the crack themes in the 80s or 90s. They implemented the option to summon units by drawing specific gestures, which works quite good. They tried to tell a story about a system that works like a religion: darwinian get born (a digital souls comes to their world), it lives an collects memories, dies and gets absorbed into a central repository. There the soul gets intermixed with all other souls and loses it's own specific memories by getting the memories and skills of all darwinians that lived before. Then it gets reborn again in order to evolve a bit more and so on. You will visit the place where the sould touch down on the world of Darwinia. You wll see the mines that provide raw materials for the little guys to buidl stuff. And you will see the place all utilized energy comes from. But the most important thing is to find the source of the virus! So grab a squad and go for it!

This game is what brought Introversion into the big leagues in terms of gaming. This brilliantly designed game went way over-schedule and way over-budget, but it was worth the wait, because it is very, very good and very, very original. The digital theme park of Darwinia is under attack and at risk of being destroyed by a virus made manifest. Your job is not simply to destroy the virus, but rather enable the Darwinians themselves to fight back. You slowly transition in this game from doing things yourself with squaddies and engineers to letting the Darwinians lead the charge with officers and Armor/Turrets. The UI and level design encourages you (for the most part) to take your time and be careful in your choices. Only rarely does the game pressure you for time. It is an amazing, liberating experience. BUY. THIS. GAME.

Darwinia is different then any other game you ever played. It has a light-year of strategy, a half gallon of action and a whole lot of charm. The controls are unique, yet strangely familiar. The setting is somewhere between tron and apace invaders. The only real flaw it has is that the moment you finally feel you understood how it has to be played, its over.