Want a break from all those tired games that take the same old storyline, add a few new characters, and beef up the graphics? Take Darwinia for a spin and get hooked back on the classic gaming elements that started your love of gaming in the first place. Where else can you watch the rebirth and march of tiny stick figure men in a polygonal world and fight invading viruses to save thousands of generations of Darwinians? It’s Lilliputian adventure at its very best.

Darwinia is not an easy game to describe. The game is essentially a world within a world, a virtual theme park of sorts, running inside a computer network concocted by scientific genius Dr. Sepulveda. The evolving life forms inhabiting that world are little stick men called Darwinians, and are the product of decades of research into genetic algorithms. Dr. Sepulveda has watched thousands of generations of Darwinians evolve, and despite their simplicity, you can’t help but feel a strong affinity for the little creatures. A nasty virus has been released in the Darwinians world, though, and their continued existence is now threatened.

The graphical landscapes in Darwinia are beautiful and unexpected, developed from “state of the art” fractal mathematics. The environment mirrors the natural world in that there are hills and valleys, land masses and water. Players can use the environment to their advantage to rein firepower down upon enemies from the height of an overlook or trap them in a valley between ridges. Similarly, the landscape can work against you and cause you to get trapped by the enemy if your strategy is not sound.

The goal of the game is to clear landscapes by wiping out all traces of the invading virus, while restoring network access to areas of Darwinia that have been pushed offline by the virus. You start out with a very basic laser-style weapon, but quickly progress to beefier weapons such as a grenade launcher, air strikes, and rockets. As you clear more and more of each level, you run across bit of “lost� code that provide upgrades to your weapons capabilities.

Darwinia, in the purest form, is a true real-time strategy game. You can only have a limited number of “programs� running at any given time. This requires you to frequently choose between firepower and saving Darwinian souls, and growing your population versus upgrading your weapons.
The controls are innovative but easy to use. To create a new squad or engineer, the gamer makes use of specific mouse movements (drawings) to call forth a program, much like the abbreviated handwriting scripts used on modern PDA devices. Another inventive part involves the “hidden� controls menu.

The most intriguing part of Darwinia, though, is the Darwinians themselves. Although they look just like simple stick figures, it doesn’t take long before you being to feel for the little guys. They chatter and wander around the landscape in groups during peaceful times, and run screaming in all directions when danger gets close. There is a touch of classical spiritualism in the game, as well. Whenever any life form is destroyed, whether it is a virus or a Darwinian, it leaves behind its soul. Engineering programs can retrieve the soul before floats back up to the heavens, and convert it back into a new Darwinian. A Darwinian reincarnation of sorts. Throughout the game, the Darwinians remain peaceful and spiritual. In fact, whenever a little Darwinian dies nearby other Darwinians, they will form a small circle around the soul and sway.

In summary, though the game may look simplistic, forgo the “next-gen� graphics so widely advertised in newer games, and lack the big-budget promotional of competitors, there is something about Darwinia that is very appealing. The game is a welcome breath of fresh air from a marketplace full of Call of Duties, Halos, and Resident Evils. If you are a fan of classically-styled games and have ever spent of your allowance on a single arcade title, then Darwinia is definitely a game you give a try.

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