Somewhere out in the vasty wilds of the internet there's a huge, experimental, virtual world populated by adorable, little green stick people. Recently, however, it's been imperiled by the mundane yet powerful evil of an email virus... and only you can save it! That's a fantastic self-insertion fantasy if I ever heard one, kind of a Neverending Story for computer dorks. Everything about Darwinia goes toward selling that premise, from the classically nerdy appearance of the world's creator to the glowing vector lines and demoscene music that accompany its Tron-like opening flythrough. It's exactly the kind of ridiculous but compelling fantasy that hooked so many of us on computers and videogames in the first place. Hell, this universe is revealed to be residing on a cluster of obsolete, Spectrum-like, '80s home computers. Even better, all this world building just happens to be wrapped around a damn nice real-time strategy game.
Darwinia came out five years ago to damn near universal critical adulation. It was not, however, a bestseller. At least, not until it finally got some eyes on it through price-slashed promotions on Steam. And its multiplayer semi-sequel, Multiwinia, hit with all the explosive thunder of a kitten thrown at a pile of really soft pillows. Actually, our own review described Multiwinia as being "to RTS games what Velveeta is to cheese," which I can't help thinking is a little unkind. Sure, it's not a particularly nuanced thing, but I don't mind dunking a pretzel in it from time to time. Oh, and Multiwinia's pretty alright, too.
The only thing that could possibly have dragged it down would have been the weight of converting a keyboard & mouse control scheme to the control pad. Getting RTS games to work with a console interface is a notoriously difficult thing, but it probably helps that in Darwinia's case the controls were pretty simple to begin with. They carry over nicely, to the extent that I took little notice of how I was making things happen after the first couple minutes. They may, in fact, be a bit easier to get the hang of than they were on PC. The new, mostly automatic camera certainly is a nice addition. It frees you to worry about the important crap, unless you actually feel like shepherding it. On the whole the game has made a damn smooth transition.
Darwinia+ is a combination of both of these games at a budget price that can be acquired and played without the inconvenience of getting off the couch. The multiplayer component may not be to everyone's taste, but the original game is nothing short of brilliant. Meanwhile, very much like the XBLA version of Rez, it's a game that doesn't show it's age on account of the fact that it was deliberately, stylishly dated to begin with. It's one of those games that's been praised to hell and back over the last few years. Now that it's on XBLA for $15 I can't help hoping that a whole new audience will pick it up and find out why.
Originally published on 1UP.
