“Invention” is
the art of nailing two things together which have never
been nailed together before.

Introversion Software, a small independent developer from the UK,
has taken several old gaming classics and combined them into a new,
fresh and highly addictive gaming experience.

Imagine taking Warcraft
II, Lemmings and Centipede, combining them
into a single game, and pouring it into the environment of the original
Tron movie.

Yes, this is an action game. There is running around and shooting,
but there are also strong story and puzzle elements along with an
amazing virtual world to explore. There is adrenaline, but there
are also places to pause, look around and plan your strategy.

So my first suggestion is to be sure you have played the three games
I mentioned above (there is a reason why they are classics). If you
liked them, then you will like Darwinia.

But let’s get to the game itself. From the web site:

“The world of Darwinia
is a virtual theme park, running inside a computer network built
by a computer genius named Dr Sepulveda.
Darwinia is populated by a sentient evolving life form called the
Darwinians. They are the product of a decade’s worth of research
into genetic algorithms.

“Unfortunately,
the systems of Darwinia have been overrun by an evil red Viral
Infection. This Virus has multiplied out of
control and must be stopped. Your task is to destroy the Viral Infection
and save the Darwinians from extinction.”

The first thing that will
strike you about the game is the loading sequence. There are several
which are chosen at random to make it
look like the game is being loaded by a Commodore 64, or an Amiga,
or an ancient PC, or whatever. But this is just eye candy. The game
actually loads very quickly and you can escape out of the “loading” at
any time.

Then you find yourself
floating above a hollow world with a “sun” in
its center. This is the virtual world of Darwinia and that “sun” is
the central database, or Heaven, where the archives of the Darwinians
are stored after their programs are terminated. This is a beautiful
scene which you can explore in full 3D. If you have a wheel mouse
(highly recommended) the wheel will raise or lower your viewpoint.
As maps go, this is one of the coolest I have ever seen. At first,
there is only one place to go to, GARDEN, so you click on it.

You enter the land of GARDEN and the Dr. finally notices you. Well,
if you’re going to hang around you might as well make yourself useful.
This is the world where you start learning the basics. And the first
thing you learn is how to control your viewpoint.

Your old friends, the
W, S, A, D keys, move you forward, backwards, left and right while
the mouse turns you side to side and up and
down. If you have a wheel on your mouse, it will raise and lower
you. There is nothing pressing at the moment, the virus appears to
be stable, so spend as much time as you like looking all over the
level. You will see the little green Darwinians and the snake-like
red virus’s. Notice the larger red things which look just like…
centipedes. You will also see little buildings with red lights flashing
on them. Your job – get the red out.

The only place you have
any control is right by the gate which brought you here. You hold
down the <ALT> key to enter Program Mode
and you see a circular area where you can start programs by drawing
a figure. This technique will be familiar to anyone who has ever
used a Computer Aided Drafting program.

At first, you resources are limited. You can only call up an Engineer
or a Squad. And you can only have a few things at a time. So we bring
up an Engineer and it starts right off converting the gate from Red
to Green. Score one for the Good Guys! That was easy enough. Maybe
the Engineer can convert the Virus’s as well? No such luck. If a
virus touches and Engineer, its program is terminated.

So we call up a squad. It is that set of three things which look
like rough chess pieces. You can move the squad around by left-clicking
where you want them to go. Once they get close to the virus’s, right-clicking
causes them to shoot. Just hold that button down while aiming with
the mouse. Gee, this game is rather like Centipede, except the bullets
go in a straight line and the world is definitely hilly. If a virus
touches the squad, you lose one of the members until all are gone.
You can then call up another one.

Once a virus is “killed” it leaves behind a little red
jewel of its “DNA” The Engineers can collect these and
take them to an Incubator where they will be converted back into
Darwinians. But they must be quick. The DNA souls only hang around
for about 30 seconds before floating up and back to Heaven.

This is the basic game play. You look around and decide your strategy.
Then send in the Squad to clean up the first infection, shooting
all the crawling bits just like in Centipede. Keep the Engineers
close behind to collect the Souls for processing into Darwinians.
And build up your resources just like Warcraft II. Then heard the
Darwinians towards whatever goal you have for that level like so
many Lemmings. Take a deep breath, look around, and go after the
next group until the level is clear and you have achieved your goals.

While all this is happening, you can keep the Dr. busy upgrading
your systems. This will let you put more units into a squad, run
more programs at the same time, get new weapons, etc.

Each level gives you training using the resources you have so far.
But the next level always introduces new enemies, new weapons and
new things for the little Darwinians to do. So while the pace remains
fairly constant, you are always presented with new problems to solve.
Namely, how to achieve your goals with the resources you have and
what the best way is to deal with the new stuff.

And you even get a prize for winning the game. Once completed, the
Mod Engine is unlocked and you can design your own levels.

If all of this sounds complicated, it is. But it is fed to you a
piece at a time and each piece becomes natural buy the time you get
to the next level. The combination of using keyboard and mouse for
multiple actions allows you to do many things. I always had a feeling
of control and never felt like the computer was taking over just
to fill in the gaps.

The graphics speak for
themselves – never have so many colors
been used to portray such low resolution. It was almost like playing
Pong with a perfectly round puck (the original Pong game had a puck
made from one square pixel). They did an excellent job of keeping
the feeling that you were not just on some exotic world, but inside
a computer.

Music is good enough to sell on its own soundtrack CD, and the sound
effects are good – appropriate and not distracting.

I know that I usually break my reviews up into different categories
and analyze each one, giving it its own grade. But not for Darwinia.
It is just too tightly integrated. It is a total gaming experience
which is fun, fresh and completely addicting. You will be too caught
up in the conquest to care much about the artwork.

So how do I grade this
game? Well, it has new ideas which have not been done before. They
nailed the user interface and playability.
It’s addicting. They made it for PC, MAC and Linux. And they are
Independent Developers. Sounds like a solid “A” to me.

Go to the web site. Download the free demo. If you like it even
half as much as I did then you’ll be ordering the whole game in no
time.

The web site doesn’t list minimal hardware requirements, but it
ran fine on my system and they stopped selling my graphics card and
CPU years ago. Also, most of the graphical effects can be toned down
or turned off to improve performance. So if your system is even close
to contemporary, you should be fine. Again, the demo is free and
will expose any problems.

Final Grade: A
(find out more about our
grading system)