The great thing about games is that if you can imagine it, you can make it. Just look at the past few games we've dabbled in. I imagine myself as a tiny little cleaning robot. Boom! Chibi-Robo! I want to drill my enemies in the face. Bam! Drill Dozer. Ok, how about this. I want an RTS set inside a computer. Like a kind of Tron thing. Can we do that?
Darwinia is a real-time strategy game where you defend goofy looking Darwinians against snakey viruses inside a computer simulation of some sort. It's different, to say the least, and I know absolutely nothing about it.
Fun Times
It took me a few tries to sort my settings out, so when I finally sat back to watch this game unfold, I was caught off-guard by the above intro. A parody of cracked software, complete with animation that presumably takes up the tiniest amount of bits and bytes imaginable. It's not the only unusual intro for Darwinia, from a cursory glance of the Internet, which goes to show that this game isn't going to be anything like what we expect.
The first screen that will be the same for everyone is a giant geometric map, with only a single label, 'Garden'. I guess we better head outside.
Here we are, eyes in the skies above a digital landscape. It may look low-resolution, but it actually looks quite swish indeed and runs just as smoothly. But what on earth are we here to do?
Our task manager - for we are inside a computer, remember - allows us to run programs in this world. The 'Squad' program spawns a trio of blocky soldiers that we can order around, though the only orders we can give are 'go' and 'shoot'.
So let's go and shoot some viruses.
Left-click on a squad to select them, left-click a place to move to, and right-click to make sure they shoot. They'll shoot on their own, but not terribly effectively. If they get overwhelmed, they don't run away, they just die on the spot. Not the smartest A.I. here, it seems. Still, we can make as many as we want, though there is a unit cap of three.
The other unit we can whip up is an Engineer, a Tron inspired ship that roams the land and keeps itself busy with automated tasks. The one task I can get him to do is pick up the souls of dead viruses, but what to do with them afterwards is anyone's guess.
We have some objectives, so I suppose we should work towards them. An interesting cube off in the distance is probably a collectable research item, so I decide to head off in that direction.
Frustrations
We head there painfully slowly. The ground is swamped with viruses, and if they get a sniff of my squad, they charge. Because my squads are stupid, they stand still until they're eaten alive unless I move them quick enough, or shoot the viruses fast enough. I often don't, meaning a new squad needs to be made, all the way back at the other end of the island.
Eventually, there is a safe route through, and we can celebrate.
Grenades! Firepower! Brilliant. But now I'm stuck on an island and need to get across the waters. I wonder how we can do that.
Your squads can't swim. They die in the water. Do you know what they take with them? Their grenades. I never got to use them.
There were some satellite dishes on each island, so I imagine what you're meant to do is Engineer them, somehow, and then maybe send your squads over the seas digitally. That'd be cool. That's not what I did, though.
Next to each dish was a... building... and these buildings can be taken over by Engineers - who can fly over water - and Squads can just be created at these buildings. No satellites needed. What was the point in that?
More slow and steady progress saw me taking over another building to open a portal or something, which allowed me to complete the level without even needing to eradicate it of viruses. Fantastic. Let's bust Darwinia open and see what's inside another stage.
Dr Sepulveda now introduces himself to us. We must have proved ourselves useful, despite sending multiple squads to their digital death. He introduces this place and the little Darwinians to us. Everything we do, we're doing it for them. And what we need to do is eliminate aaaaallll the threats.
Further Frustrations
This is where Darwinia really started to grate on me. Taking things slowly was fine. I could understand going slowly and carefully. What I couldn't understand was my utterly idiotic squads, willing to walk through instant-death defensive shields because their pathfinding is literally point to point.
Look at this highlighted squad. It's about to walk through that giant pillar and disappear from existence because they don't go round pillars. They go through them, even if it means death. And not only does it mean death, but it means I have to go all the way back to the start and spawn another squad, hold their hand, and constantly watch over them.
And then there's this guy, who can now carry 15 souls, instead of 10, but still doesn't tell me anything about what to do with them. They're not dropped, they're not given to Darwinians. What is the point? Could you maybe inform me of the mechanics, Doctor, rather than your dreams for these Darwinians?
An age later, I have a squad atop a hill, safe from viruses and ready to remove the few that remain on this end of the island. If they clear the way, I can get an Engineer over there to make use of the building, so that I can spawn new units there, and not have to trek all over the map before doing anything.
And he tried to fly through an instadeath defensive shield. Good job. I'm out.
Final Word
Darwinia looks so much better than it plays. As far as ideas go, it even sounds better than a lot of other games. In places, it actually feels like a really good game. But I'm not going to find out for myself, because to me, it played like a chore.
I bet, as the game goes on, newer, smarter units will eliminate or reduce the issues I have with the game, but I just can't slog my way through it to get to that point.
Am I perhaps not using my units very efficiently? Could I go doing something different to give myself a drastically easier time? I can't rule it out. Would be nice to have been told what to do, rather than have to find out on my own. Even the help button is useless, repeating sentences instead of revealing new ones.
I don't know. There's something about Darwinia that should be experienced, but I don't know what it is. I'm grateful for being able to now put gameplay to a title, but I've got to be missing something here. What is it?
If you play it, I hope you find out.
Fun Facts
Darwinia was the result of a prototype war game with more stuff on screen at once than any other title. They can't all be gormless squads, can they?
Darwinia, developed by Introversion Software, first released in 2005.
Version played: PC, 2005.