Review: Darwinia+

Overview

Storyline

Darwinia is a digital eco world created by Dr. Sepulveda and is inhabited by a small free willed single polygon civilisation aptly named Darwinians. The story takes place amidst an emergency in Darwinia; a virus has attacked and shut down the key facilities that make the world tick. Guided by Dr. Sepulveda you are tasked with bringing about peace and vanquishing the virus from Darwinia.

Gameplay

The gameplay is very simple to grasp and is essentially a RTS / shoot ‘em up, but there are elements of puzzle, hacker, and God games thrown in for extra measure. The first two levels serve as a tutorial allowing plenty of time to familiarise yourself with the controls and understand what’s going on, while also progressing the story before the real action begins to get going.

The overall aim of the game is to rid the world of the virus population and rescue the Darwinians by guiding them to safe areas. Throughout the game you must balance the use of troops and engineers. Your troops will protect your population of Darwinians and engineers as well as being able to clear a path through the enemies in the game world. Engineers can re-activate equipment and machinery, as well as collect souls and create Darwinians.

The Darwinians themselves aren’t directly controllable but through promotion of single units, you can guide the populace to certain locations and make use of some of the controllable machinery in the world to progress the storyline. The game rather feels like herding sheep and the method of controlling the Darwinians will not be unfamiliar to those who have played Pikmin or Kingdom of Keflings.

The troops in your squad are controlled either by giving them simple ‘go here’ instructions, similar to how you can guide your engineers, or you can take direct control over them. The left stick controls movement and the right stick controls their directional fire, additionally grenades are added and can be thrown using the right trigger. It’s a very asteroids / geometry wars way of control/attack and style of gameplay, although not as hectic and more similar to the way cannon fodder played out.

Another element to the gameplay is the upgrades of your programs. Everything in the game is a program of sorts and Dr. Sepulveda is working in the background on upgrading and increasing the abilities of them. Through the pause screen a research menu can be accessed showing Dr. Sepulveda’s progress on the different areas of expertise that can be increased, you can tell him which you would prefer him to focus on.

The RTS nature of Darwinia+ should definitely not put anyone off from at least trying this game. The button combinations are minimal and work superbly on the Xbox controller to make navigating and order your units around an absolute joy, even more so if you have wrestled with the controls of any of the command and conquer series on Xbox. In fact to class this as an RTS is a bit of an exaggeration, Darwinia+ is a game that has RTS elements and certainly doesn’t focus or dwell upon it, its more of a point and click style game with strategy decisions needed here and there to be able to complete your mission.

The terrain that you need to navigate is quite varied level to level and in each zone it can be used to your advantage, although at times I did find that my squad was getting stuck on the landscape especially when they were following an automated route I had plotted for them.

Multiplayer is definitely where the action is and is named Multiwinia. This mode has been treated as its own game. The strategy elements are a lot stronger here, needing to employ cunning tactics to get one up on your opponent, which can either be a friend in private match or someone random over xbox LIVE. There is also an option to play against a CPU controlled opponent at multiple difficulties.

There are a multitude of different game modes and they are all action packed and insane – massive Darwinian brawls are a certainty, huge armies can be generated and with the single polygon nature of the Darwinians you can literally have 1000’s on screen trying to destroy each other.

The method of control is similar to that found in the campaign with point and click simple ‘go here’ commands, there is also the addition of being able to hold the A button to paint a selection of Darwinians to move. This mode alone will certainly keep gamers firmly addicted and their attention held which is certainly novel for an Arcade game to offer not only an in depth campaign but an equally deep and exciting multiplayer mode.

Graphics

The graphics will appeal to everyone. They are quite unique from what we have become accustomed to on Xbox LIVE Arcade and will particularly appeal to the older gamers. Darwinia + has vector style graphics, with a render over similar to that found in Rez. The characters and movement are also very reminiscent to computer enemies and characters from the film TRON.

The Darwinians themselves are quite iconic and don’t have any animations of movement but float across the environments and as their protector you become quite attached to the little buggers, although I challenge anyone not to giggle when terminating one; highlight a promoted Darwinian and press the back button to remove him/her from the playing field and as the Darwinian disappears a small cry is heard!

At times the camera can be a frustration, when not in direct control of your troops it works perfectly but when in direct control of them it can feel a bit restrictive.

Audio

The game begins pumping out a funky 8-bit style tune, unfortunately this isn’t carried on throughout the game, my guess is although cool to start with this could have become annoying. The SFX is also similar in style and is jazzed up to give it more power.

Overall

The game is slow to get going and a bit random in nature but stick at it and you will experience a superb arcade game that blends strategy, action, puzzle, hacker and god games into one game. A deep campaign mode with a great storyline and a very rich multiplayer makes this a very worthwhile purchase.

Essentially it’s a very simple game of guiding, with obstacles and puzzles in-between which will need clearing before being able to guide the Darwinians home or to their objective can be completed. Darwinia+ can become very addictive and fun to play if you can get over the slow pace at the beginning of the game and the annoyance of traversing some of the landscapes.

Review: Darwinia+ Results