Darwinia: An early Steam darling.

I’ve had a Steam account for about 18 years. I got mine the day it was available to the public: September 12, 2003. More than half of my life has been giving money to Gabe Newell and the folks in Bellevue so I can play PC games. It’s kinda surreal when you think about it.

It took Valve several years to make Steam a reliable service. Those first few years of Steam were not very great: The always-online factor, an unreliable community service where alternatives like Xfire shined, having to get used to not being able to play games on day one due to server overloads, the works.

A handful of companies weren’t on board with Valve, one of them being 3DRealms, who opted to sell their gravity-defying shooter Prey on rival service Triton first. And that’s not even getting into the recent kerfuffle Epic Games has been doing by trying to posture themselves as the David to Valve’s Goliath.

Those early years were pretty much bolstered by Valve’s offerings and any small-time developer or publisher that was willing to support their endeavor. Stuff like Rag Doll Kung Fu and Shadowgrounds. But a small fledgling UK company by the name of Introversion Software, who self-proclaimed themselves as “the last of the bedroom programmers,” decided to try putting one of their games on Steam, and it was quite a game.

(One of the many intros the game will play after the initial launch. Others include a cracktro, a dedication to Cannon Fodder, and even a reference to the ZX Spectrum.)

Darwinia is one of those early Steam darlings. Originally released in 2005, the game would be Introversion’s second game after Uplink, and featured a similar theme of computers. Though instead of being a hacker like in Uplink, you’re a user trying to stop an evil threat on a network.

(Free poster?! Sweet!)

Back then I wasn’t 100% on-board with digital distribution – technically I’m still not on-board, but regardless –  thus I ended up getting this game not through Steam, but through a physical copy published by Cinemaware Marquee, a publishing label known for taking niche games and bringing them to US audiences. It came with the game, a poster and a keychain of one of the little Darwinians. In essence, Cinemaware Marquee was the Limited Run Games of the 2000s. I eventually grabbed Darwinia on Steam proper along with a bunch of other Introversion games years later, but I still have that physical copy.

(They don't take long to throw you into the fray.)

Darwinia is a real-time strategy game with some action game elements. You play as the unseen, unnamed player who’s entered the world of Darwinia, a life simulator with little characters called Darwinians. Darwinia has been infected by a mysterious virus which slowly destroyed the world, of which you join in just as it’s happening. After being briefly scolded by creator Dr. Sepulveda, he lets you learn the mechanics to hopefully stop the virus.

(A simple task for a simple person.)

Using the Task Manager, you can initially select a Squad which will attack the virus either on their own or through your own control; and an Engineer which can collect the souls of the virus, reprogram satellite dishes or other places of interest, or acquire new software. Later on, the game gives you Officers to control Darwinians and Armour which can double as a transport vehicle or a defensive turret.

Since it’s a real-time strategy game, you can spawn and control specific units. Left click will by default move the selected unit to a destination, and right click is context-specific, depending on the unit selected (for example, Squaddies will shoot lasers with right click). Unlike conventional RTS games, you can only control one unit at a time and you have a limit on the number of units you can have running at one time. Even activating the later Officers requires at least one unused slot in the Task Manager to use it, which is rather frustrating as time goes on.

(I had to use a Mobygames screenshot here, because by default this is activated by the "ALT" key, which doesn't play nice with Steam's screenshot feature.)

At least it’s better than the original premise, which involved the player using the mouse to draw symbols to create tasks or to switch weapons. This was in the original release and eventually was phased out in later updates, though you can still toggle it on if you wanted to see what Introversion originally had in mind. It didn’t take me long to get frustrated with how finicky it was on gestures, thus switching back to the simple version.

(Ain't a real-time strategy without some researching elements.)

Dr. Sepulveda can help passively by researching certain upgrades, including increasing the number of tasks, improving squaddies and engineers, the works. By default Sepulveda will only work on one upgrade at a time, so it’s imperative to carefully choose which things need upgrading.

(Some of the baddies on offer. Nasty little things.)

The rest of Darwinia is fairly simple real-time strategy stuff, but often just involves eradicating enemy viruses as well as the other depictions of viruses in the game which are much tougher, such as spiders, ants, centipedes and such. These often require a few groups of powerful squads to make it easier to progress, and one mission where I had to get an armor factory running required me to brute-force through a virus-filled area with spiders and centipedes and enemy spawn monsters called triffids that were guarding a specific piece of equipment. It was pretty frustrating.

(It's fun to try to wrangle a Squad up what should be a fairly easy hill, only for them to get stuck on it for some reason.)

Even for being a simple RTS, the game’s AI is considerably lacking in spots. Often times I’d see squads get stuck in level geometry or have difficulty climbing certain areas, times where Officers would go through satellite dishes to progress and constantly bump around the area until I told it to move, and frequent occurrences of the Darwinians screaming in panic over a virus strand I couldn’t see. These aren’t dealbreakers, but I expected some better pathfinding for a real-time strategy game.

(It looks like Christmas up in here.)

Despite that, the game is visually impressive for a 2005 game. The stark 3D graphic pattern combined with the simple 2D design of the Darwinians brings a distinct style that I hadn’t seen from a PC game from that time. Introversion seems to have a knack for making their games visually appealing, and Darwinia is no exception. The music, mostly composed by Timothy “Trash80” Lamb, fits the vibe of the game well, with “Schroeder’s Failure” being one of the standout tracks, a melancholy piano tune of which was the reason I thought about writing this game.

(This is a pretty cool depiction of a world map for a game like this.)

There’s about 10 levels to go through, with one optional bonus mission, and once you’re done, you get praise by Dr. Sepulveda and the option to make your own levels in the world of Darwinia. There’s not much in replay value, and it took me about 10-12 hours to beat, which is likely on the low end of RTS games, but I wouldn’t know as it’s not really my genre.

(I can't think of many real time strategy games that give this level of control when it comes to stuff like that. It's pretty neat.)

Eventually Introversion made a multiplayer driven followup named Multiwinia, which had multiple players trying to take control of areas, and a console spinoff called Darwinia+. After that, Introversion moved on to other projects, including DEFCON, a simulation of the famous “Global Thermonuclear War” game from WarGames; and Scanner Sombre, an exploration-driven game, in 2017. They eventually struck gold with a simulation game called Prison Architectin 2015, of which they were the main developers on it for several years before selling the IP to Paradox Interactive. As for what they’re doing these days, they’ve been showing off failed prototypes but haven’t announced a game in a while.

(Insurmountable odds.)

Darwinia is on Steam and GOG for a “tenner” as the Brits might call it, and it’s honestly worth playing, even if you’re not big into real-time strategy games. It may not have been the game that got me hooked on the genre, but it did make me less hesitant to play something that wasn’t a shooter. 

(There's even a reference to Conway's Game of Life in here. They went all-in on those references, didn't they?)

While I wouldn’t mind a sequel to Darwinia, I figure that’s not something Introversion is really interested in doing. They seem to be a studio wanting to move forward and try to make something amazing, not cash in on their past. But who knows? Maybe they’ll take a big fat stack from Epic Games’ Tim Sweeney and put their next game on the Epic Store, just like how they used Steam to gain a widespread audience. Either way, I anticipate what they’ll work on next.