Home
sign up| features / game column |
 content by: editor |
 games: darwinia
Back to the future. Immediately, Darwinia is a refreshing, appealing experience – from the very act of first immersing yourself in the retro gameworld, consisting of tinted wireframe islands populated by pixelated goodies (Darwinians themselves, plus your Squads and Engineers) and baddies (various virii, which are corrupted Darwinians). Using your Squads, the soldiers of the game, and Engineers – which look like something out of Tron, and effect repairs and gather upgrade data – you must fight the viral forms, collect data “souls” and restore the world of Darwinia.  It's not just the world and its internal narrative that is novel and will make this a cult title. The very premise itself is very retro and very British. The game introduces itself as a “virtual theme park” gone sour. The park is the brainchild of one Dr Sepulveda, a distinctly Clive Sinclair type who was once the darling of British computing, but took a tumble with his flawed Protologic 68000, a strangely familiar machine. Using his warehouse of returned Protologics, Sepulveda networked them and created Darwinia as a kind of AI research tool. There's something special about a game that offers not just the scenario of the game's world and actions, but also a strong, significant context - the narrative of the play itself part and parcel of a wider fiction outside the game.  In terms of the actual play mechanic, developer Introversion relies on the player drawing shapes with the mouse to summon the Squads and Engineers. It's an innovative ploy and, even if it's not quite as intuitive as the developers would like to think, ably adds to the distinctiveness of Darwinia. Imagine something somewhere between Rez, Pikmin and the Genesis sequence in Star Trek: The Wrath Of Khan, and you'll get some idea of Darwinia. It's retro, wilfully geeky and unique. Oh, and it's reasonably priced too.
Danniel Etherington
 conversations
Read members' comments.
|
 |
related info
 useful links
note: The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
see also
 viewtiful joe 2last week  zoo keepergames #96  resident evil 4games #095  nintendo dsgames #094  metal gear solid 3games #093 books  books and comics archive Author interviews and reviews from 2002 to 2008. |
send to a friend
access 1000s of articles
