Developer: Introvision.

Release Date: 4^th march 2005.

OS: Windows: xp/vista, Mac OS X, Linux.

Website: http://www.introversion.co.uk/darwinia/.

Price: £10 download/£12 Disc.

Genre: Hard to say, fantastic blend of RTS, Puzzle and a few others.

Brief Description Of Game:

The world of Darwinia is a surreal and retro place, filled with epic fractal vistas and populated by iconic video game sprites from the past twenty years of computer games. The world is locked in warfare and on the verge of self-destruction, as the once peaceful Darwinians are besieged by a massive Red Viral onslaught. Against the backdrop of this war, this game within a game takes place.

Combining fast-paced action with strategic battle planning, Darwinia features a novel and intuitive control mechanism, a graphical style ripped from 80's retro classics like Tron and Defender, and a story concerning a tribe of nomadic sprites trapped in a modern 3D world.

This game was released via direct download in March of 2005 by Introversion Software and Pinnacle Software, with a box copy release in June of 2006 by Cinemaware Marquee.

System Requirements:

600 MHz CPU
128MB RAM
60MB hard disk
16MB graphic card

My Opinion Of The Game:

Entertaining, yet a little bit of a job to get into. However this is most likely because I’m not a fan of RTS games, and not a reflection on the superior quality of this game. It is its blend of several genres, an obscure but engaging storyline and the retro yet colourful visuals that make this game a joy to play.

For a real review: http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/599/599090p1.html

How It Went On The Samsung NC10:

(this is when power mode is on maximum performance)

The results were surprising. Installing and running the game in itself is easy, and particularly quick. Conversely playing the game wasn’t. Default resolution for the downloaded version is 1024x600, with this and its low system requirements it seems it was made to be a netbook game. This just seems not to be true. It was a promising start to Darwinia, there seemed to be a high frame rate on maximum graphics, and no slow down in anyway, yet Darwinia soon turned it to a slide show nightmare. As soon as the map got slightly busy frame rate dropped to about 5fps, after reducing the graphic settings to lowest possible everything, in a vain hope to increase playability on this great little game, I got the frame rate to about 10-15fps which wasn’t too bad.

After discovering I had no idea how to play this game, I went to the tutorial level and that is when the biscuit was stolen; on lowest graphic settings I couldn’t get past 8fps. Completely unplayable. After this major setback I installed the game on my desktop and played it for the remainder of the afternoon.

Low Graphics Settings on the Samsung NC10

Maximum Graphics Settings on the Samsung NC10

Is it Worth It?

I can’t say. In the smaller levels it is just about playable, and its more than possible (even if it isn’t pleasant) to play through the bigger (and, so much, slower) levels. Perhaps a RAM expansion will improve performance. At any rate this game will be a great addition for a desktop or a more powerful laptop.