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Metascore

Generally favorable reviews - based on 46 Critics What's this?

User Score

Generally favorable reviews- based on 108 Ratings

  • Summary: Combining fast paced action with strategic battle planning, the game features a novel and intuitive control mechanism, a graphical style ripped from 80's retro classics, and a story concerning a tribe of video game sprites trapped in a modern 3d game world. [Introversion]
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 38 out of 46
  2. Negative: 0 out of 46
  1. 100
    It's a beautiful mix of everything we love in retro gaming and everything we're capable of having with modern technology, truly a match made in virtual heaven!
  2. 100
    The visuals are simple yet strikingly effective. The core gameplay is manageable, yet effectively complex. A game like this isn’t produced by huge teams with tons of money. Those kinds of games (god bless ‘em) are pure craft. Darwinia is art.
  3. Darwinia is, all told, wonderful. It's the kind of game that would show impressionable young kids the breadth and scope of the medium without overwhelming them with mechanics.
  4. Where most games are built out of wood, bullets and money, Darwinia has an unapologetically spiritual vision, its geeky god presiding over a world which dares to make an imagined religion into a ruleset. That in some places it falls short of its ambitions is not what makes this game important. [March 2005, p.82]

See all 46 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 38 out of 43
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 43
  3. Negative: 5 out of 43
  1. JovanL.
    10
    creative fun and kept me entertained far longer then games i bought for 50 dollars all though if the people who created this game could make a psp verse that would be sick i think its would translate well. Expand
  2. This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Living in a dull decade of "realistic" shooters and generic game design, Darwinia is a refreshing little game that stands out and truly displays video games as an art. The plot involves you helping a computer programmer wipe out a virus which has infected the digital world of Darwinia. Fighting the virus is done by using your 'squads' of heavily armed soldiers and, later on, the natives of the world itself, the Darwinians. Perhaps the most striking aspect of the game is the visuals, which are intentionally made to look almost 1980's era graphics; it sounds dodgy but ultimately it works, and works brilliantly. I wouldn't say it's a sublime game; some of the pathfinding and in-game missions are dull and difficult. I don't mean the puzzle kind of difficult, I mean giving you a task early in the game which seems to assume you've already mastered the controls. I can't complain too much though: the environments are lush (if blocky), the effects are satisfying and the story is interesting. If, like me, you see games as an art, not as a cash cow money-maker, then you should immediately get this game. Expand
  3. Sweet Indie game, very original and inspiring. On the other hand, you will not want to play it for the second time and don't expect it will take you very long to finish it. For me it ended at 12 hours. Expand
  4. There is almost no instruction on how to play the game, you have to do that from google. The pathfinding is just about the worst i have ever seen in a game. The graphics are boring, the enemies are seemingly endless and infuriating on the later levels...the levels, which all seem to blend together in repetition, are boring and offer nothing new. The combat is bland and boring. ANother problem i had with it is that they made the same button to select a unit as the button to move a unit... Strategy 101 mistake. Never buying an Introversion game again. Terrible, just terrible game. Collapse

See all 43 User Reviews