I already owned a boxed retail copy of Darwinia (with a little key chain), but I didn't get round to installing it for years, then I ended up buying it again on steam through a special offer bundle on indie games, so I decided now was the right time to get round to playing it!
I will tell you, to me it was by far the best game I bought in that pack of indie games! (though some of the others are great too)
It plays a bit like Cannon Fodder (which I used to like), but your troops are completely disposable and mostly you are doing missions to assist an A.I. race called Darwinians, fighting to survive from a virus which has infected their world.
It may not sound that good, but the execution of this game is really great.
I really do feel like I am accessing a very small world built for the Darwinians, I am under the impression that this is their long-established home land I do feel like they have their little ways and beliefs and in a way I do feel like they are just wanting to live out their lives in peace, devoted to learning and exploring.
And so, I feel a strong form of compassion and desire to protect them.
It's a game that gave me interesting feelings; fixing the structure of their digital world and even more, their digital but tangible religion, is something that was mind blowing when I stopped to think about it.
The graphics are simple but completely effective, digitally generated landscapes populated with menacing viruses. The sound is also very effective. Most of the music is by someone called Trash80 and you can download some tracks used in Darwinia from his website, it's really good electronic music, a little retro chiptune in places.
The various startup screens for the game are fun references to old gamer geekery too, from watching the Darwinians play out life to the old 8-bit demo scene splash screens, I liked that touch to the game.
The game has a small amount of levels but some of them did take a very long time to do, so the whole game took about 7 hours to complete (according to the clock on steam) but that's over a duration of a few weeks.
I really really enjoyed this game, especially as an experience.
