Darwinia

I just finished the demo of Darwinia, from Introversion Software (who’s first game, Uplink was freaking awesome). I downloaded the demo a few days ago, but couldn’t figure out what the hell I was supposed to do. Amazingly, the team thought the game was so self-evident that they didn’t include any real help or a tutorial. Fortunately, after getting what I’m sure was some pretty frustrated feedback, they published a tutorial on their site (and are going to release a new version of the demo with some more assistance).

Now that I understand what is going on in the game it is really neat. It’s like a tactical, squad-based, real-time strategy, but without many of the shitty aspects of RTSes. When Uplink came out I thought these guys might be a one-trick pony, but this game is wholly different but still really fun. It’s good to know that it’s still possible for an indie software house to turn out the good games.