Multiwinia Hands-On Preview

Impressions

Possibly the most important thing to say about Multiwinia – which we’ve saved for the last page as that’s all anyone ever reads – is that it really isn’t just a multiplayer version of Darwinia.

Well, it is. But it isn’t too.

The fundamentals of the game are all still there, passed down from Darwinia to it’s ultra-competitive spawn, like a genetic disease which manifests itself as an ability to cause acute headaches and cravings for muffins. The game is still very neon and streamlined. There’s a lot of the same units and abilities in the game.

At the same time though, it’s deliciously different. The whole game feels quicker and punchier, playing very much like a video of Warlords 3 stuck on fastforward and watched by a infant overdosing on sugar. Like Introversion’s other multiplayer hit, DEFCON, it can be mastered in a few rounds and is perfectly sized to help fill a spare hour or lunchtime.

This streamlined gameplay also makes the game incredibly easy to get to grips to on a console and we quickly found that the Xbox 360 controller was definitely our input of choice for Multiwinia.


Admittedly though, a lot of that came from the fact that we’re playing a preview build here and it’s cluttered with all sorts of developer and debug stuff. An errant finger on the keyboard bought up more charts than even Richard and Harry know what to do with – especially true when both are recovering from a 3AM benchmarking binge.

Playing the game on an Xbox 360 controller is, we think, probably the best way to learn the ropes though – and that’s a strange thing for us to say about a strategy game. Console controllers aren’t usually vaunted as being the best tool to order your troops around the map with, but the wholly autonomous nature of the Darwinians means that it isn’t really an issue here.

Whereas the PC combo of a keyboard and mouse does have advantages, it can take a few minutes to learn what buttons do what. With the Xbox 360 pad though, this is entirely removed and the game is so intuitive it practically plays itself.

There are a few bizarre things about the game which really help appeal to our very dry, British sensibilities. Statues in the capture game which resembled teapots or proclaim YOUR AD HERE, and crazy, oft-creepy descriptions of the levels that point to a deep, but mysteriously inaccessible lore that undermines the whole game.

Most bizarre of all though is the strange ethical twist that Multiwinia plays on you, much like DEFCON did. Your troopers, the Darwinians, are faceless, featureless beings with no will or cunning of their own. All they have is a blind trust to their leaders – to you.


And what do you do with them? You commit them to infinite agony, reviving and having them slaughtered on the battlefield for some banal point-based purpose. Their only hope is to be ascended to General – not that being made to stand still and pledge others to the bloodbath is much better. In some ways the totemic, purposeless nature of the General is the worst of all fates.

Multiwinia doesn’t force this view on you though. You’ll just be playing the game on your own and letting your 2D men do what they do best when suddenly it’ll dawn on you. You’ll get attached to a specific General, or imagine what the personality of that Engineer is and what he might look like if he had a face – when BAM! Suddenly the weight of you mercilessness crushes you like tangible vertigo or a huge muffin fallen from a great height.

Multiwinia is probably best defined by those small moments of joy and horror which, though projected by the player, definitely help make the game interesting. More interesting than most of the rubbish on XBLA.

Though not a casual game by definition, Multiwinia is definitely a game which lends itself to the casual gameplay style. A Domination game will fill an hour here, a co-op match will take up 20 minutes there. Immediately accessible and consistently enjoyable, Multiwinia looks to be a definite must-have game for fans of quick and easy skirmish strategies.