Mysterious because I still don’t know quite what it does. Then there is the mysterious Magical Forest: There are many more power-ups of course, several pretty standard things like turrets, air strikes and a nuclear launch: These are the main highlights for me, they contain ideas that can easily be dismissed as a powerup in the game, but given a little thought they become so much more. The Dark Forest is also extremely vulnerable to fire. Placed at a spawn point this can restrict the enemies growth, it doesn’t stop it however ‘winians working at the point won’t die and if moved out of the area quickly neither will the newly spawn. But whereas ‘winians normally die and float up into the sky (as per Darwinia), if killed by the forest then they remain in the branches of the trees, forever haunting the location. One of my favourites, when unlocked a Dark Forest can be seeded at any location slowly draining the souls of life. In the above game I planted two lots of Ants Nests and even launched a nuclear strike yet they still remained. They aren’t quite as tricky as Futurewinians can be, although they aren’t easy to dislodge. These corrupt ‘winians are like the Futurewinians, they can claim spawn points to propagate their kind, they are also immune to fire, also like the Futurewinians they can join you on the leaderboard and in some cases even win. If an infected crate is opened then black virii are released, this alone isn’t too bad, if there happen to be any nearby ‘winians though they too are infected and become Evilinans. You may have put a stop to the infection in Darwinia but there are others that are looking to take control. No-one knows who they actually are, but they do capture the imagination, should you stop to think. As long as they are a small group and are alone they can be dealt with, but should they reach a spawn point they will be extremely hard to dislodge without some lucky powerups. As you can imagine anyone who has this permanently will be extremely hard to get rid of, any forces you send to deal with them will ultimately help them grow. For those who don’t know if you unlock and assign these weapons to your ‘winians then instead of regular blasts which kill the opposition they fire conversion blasts that turn them into your colour. However if they capture enough then a landing party will be released, the Futurewinians are like normal ‘winians except they always fire subversion guns.
Should someone open a crate that releases the Futurewinians, then a giant UFO will start hovering across the map, it’s vacuum sucking up the unfortunate souls beneath. If they land during a game and take hold, your in for a lot of trouble. This is a fairly gruesome topic, but with the simplistic nature of the game it all boils down to pure theory. Their sacrifice will secure the other’s lives.
If the infected reach the main population, pretty soon everyone will be infected, instead you have to order them into a remote corner of the island (or if you’re felling evil, send them towards the enemy). This brilliantly fits the ideas of disease control into a small section of the game. This unpleasant program infects all the nearby ‘winians with an infectious virus, they ‘hiccup’ weapons fire (particularly nasty with the rocket launchers), infect any nearby ‘winians and eventually die. I am going to go through some of my highlights in an attempt to show you what I mean:
Sometimes good, sometimes bad once you have directed a team (or sometimes nearby wanderers will act under their own intelligence) to open the crate of knowledge a remarkable idea is born into the world. Representative of programs and packets of data, these were only used a handful of times in Darwinia but they become the main focus for me when playing Multiwinia. It’s a pretty decent strategy game, focusing on simple commands and forming paths, however more recently I have come to realise that in this empty shell of a game, tiny seeds remain that contain some fantastic ideas. Sadly Multiwinia takes this world and leaves it’s soul behind, all the things that endeared us to the little stick-men are lost and we are left with an average game. The simple idea that someone could create a complex world where little creatures struggle and grow, not like computer programs, but actual life is more than enough to lift the game from the average and that’s not to mention the often beautiful art-style. Darwinina was, and is, a brilliant game, at it’s base it is simple and doesn’t offer much but the imagery is amazing. Many dislike the game, often comparing it Darwinia. I bought Multiwinia a while ago in one of the Steam sales, played it for a while then let it drift away.
0 kommentar(er)
