Darwinia...

[3x0r10]

... is confusing. I've been intrigued by darwinia for such looong time and worried that it might be somekind of experimental game I would hate with passion (trauma is one). But heck holiday sale the game got interesting pricing, bought the darwinia + multiwinia pack.

I'm on the first mission, and I can't even pass this one.

So... I play around, and some guy giving me instruction to eliminate the red snake thing and I move my squad and shoot them around think "oh cool, it's like syndicate or cannon fodder in tron-like setting, where you control little people in isometric view and you do stuffs... control is sweet and fluid, I might enjoy this game but I probably won't spent too much time on it"

Now... I'm on the first island and have activated the radar-like disc, and the game told me to "click on it to control it"

So, I click it... nothing happens. And my squad just bumping themselves to the disc. Later I found out that I need to deselect my squad (spacebar) then I can actually select the radar disc :|

Pathfinding is awful aswell. So you have to actually babysitting them throughout the levels?

Now I'm at the "control tower" and the game told me to "send an engineer to reprogram it", I send my engineer there and clicking on the tower gives me the description. But my engineer just bumping into it non-stop, with no effect at all.

And what are those red diamonds my engineer collected as its tail? Oh okay it's the "program DNA". But... what should I do with it?

The tutorial, well, apparently I'm stuck at the tutorial level.

Then I fire up multiwinia, this one seems much more interesting tho. I don't know what I did, when suddenly the darwinians (the green blocky people) gather around and they become big and the smaller one lined up in formations. Then the AI have bombs and lots of darwinians in groups with their leaders attacking my base. I can only startlet : what the hell is going on?

This game is fail to explain itself. It's good to be original, but at least they can make it much more simple to understand. There're tons of other indie games I have, such as bit trip runner, audiosurf, cave story+, limbo, super meat boy and jamestown. Some of them are very original, like bit trip runner, audiosurf and limbo. Heck limbo doesn't even have narrative or instructions texts, but yet it can explain itself very clearly and I've finish it, enjoyed every second of it without any problem.

Multiwinia looks more fun if I can actually learn how to play it. It's like RTS in tron like settings. I can live with that.

So... am I doing Darwinia wrong? Just on darwinia first I'll probably learn multiwinia after I finish darwinia anyway... how do I complete the mission, plz be very elaborate and consider I'm a very game illiterate, step by step instructions on what to click, what to do, what keyboard should I press, etc.

[keithdt]

For me, the controls were so awful that the game was unplayable.
Especially with the poor help. Deleted from my computer after less than 30 minutes.

[celesacelavi]

Originally Posted by keithdt

For me, the controls were so awful that the game was unplayable.
Especially with the poor help. Deleted from my computer after less than 30 minutes.

Yes it's true

[m_nadal]

Darwinia, like Introversion's previous title Defcon 5, is what you get when a team decides to make a RTS without actually knowing how. The pathfinding in Defcon 5 was practically non-existant. I got a bit further into the game, to the ESCORT location, but navigating the squad up the mountain to the third egg spawner is arbitrarily difficult, and obviously so due to bad path coding.

It's not worth bothering with frankly, although I was intrigued long enough to learn how to play. After I understood the game, I understood how badly designed it was.

With the wealth of interesting, good games available today, don't waste your time on Darwinia.