Darwinia: Behold, Digital Darwinism
Company: Cinemaware Marquee
If you thought there was no way to improve on the god game genre without making them bigger and more micro-managing, then you were wrong. Darwinia uses a simple, elegant control function to create a wonderfully immersive world that is not only cool to look at, but offers a landscape as vast and complex as our own universe. You enter the digital world of Darwinia created by Dr. Sepulveda. Darwinia is inhabited by sentient and evolving lifeforms called Darwinians. These independent lifeforms have set about their world, which exists inside a super computer, creating their own beliefs and way of life. The only problem is that like any computer, there are eventually viruses that creep in, leading up to a great war with the Virii.
In the demo, you arrive just after the great war to witness a great moment in their evolution. They have built a rocket to leave their home and explore new systems. And, as luck would have it, they are attacked by the Virii just before lift off. You are asked by Dr. Sepulveda to intervene and help the native green Darwinians regain control and refuel their rocket, so they may embark on their journey. In order to assist while in Darwinia, you are given access to "programs" that will allow you to interact directly in the environment. There are four available spots in the menu allowing for four programs to be active and running in the world at any one time.
The first thing you create is a squad of offensive bots that are armed and directly controllable to combat the red Virii menace. You use these to clear the way for your other programs and Darwinians. You can then activate an engineer program that has many useful functions. The first thing that an engineer program is used for is accessing modules that the Virii have taken over, such as radar disks that are used to beam over areas of the environment you can't travel over. You will find pieces of research that are randomly found in the environment. You will use the engineer to decode these pieces of research that allow for upgrades, weapons, and tools you will need later. The only ones you come across in the demo are the grenade program and the officer program. The engineer will also collect deceased lifeforms in order to return them to an incubator module and grow new green Darwinians.
Darwinia is simple to control, yet there is a vast set of possibilities for the way the game is played. I applaud Cinemaware Marquee for their vision in picking up this title for distribution. Some of you may have seen Darwinia available for download through STEAM sometime ago, but the game itself was not available in a box you could pick up anywhere until just recently. Keep your eyes glued to GameVortex for my complete review coming soon. This title promises to be one of my all-time favorites and quite possibly my first editor's pick to date.
-WUMPUSJAGGER, GameVortex Communications AKA Bryon Lloyd
Related Links: Darwinia Cinemaware Marquee
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