Anyone who considers themselves a PC gaming enthusiast should know about Darwinia, the critically acclaimed you-got-your-action-game-in-my-RTS project from Introversion Software. Multiwinia, the multiplayer sequel to Darwinia, comes out in less than a month and Introversion was good enough to let us play the preview build to get an idea of what’s in store.
Like Darwinia, Multiwinia has RTS trappings in that there are Spawn Points which create armies of Multiwinians which you can then send across the map to do your bidding. There isn’t the same kind of resource management that a standard RTS has, though: instead of mining for gold/energy/what have you and creating different classes and buildings, periodically every Spawn Point on the map gets a fresh batch of Multiwinians. The more you control, the more you get and so spawn control can be the key to victory.
Most of your unit variation in Multiwinia comes from being able to promote a Multiwinian to the position of officer: in Darwinia you couldn’t control the Darwinians directly and had to use their officers, but now you can use them to issue a ‘form up’ command that trades vastly increased attack ability for slower movement and weakness from the front and back. You can also find various powerups and unit types in the crates that drop from the sky: send a group of Multiwinians to a crate and they’ll open it, giving you anything from a turret to place wherever you’d like to an airstrike (which is a ton of fun to use in a game of King of the Hill). Not every item inside the crates is good, however, though in my time playing I don’t think I ever got the giant spider shown in the preview videos (see below).
Multiwinia will have six game modes: Domination, King of the Hill, Capture the Statue, Assault, Rocket Riot and Blitzkreig. I was only able to play King of the Hill and Capture the Statue, but Domination was also previewed in the first of Introversion’s Multiwinia Mondays series. Overall, it seems as though the matches with three or more players will be more fun, as it’s less a straight battle over turf as it is a multifront war where you have to balance multiple threats.
I also might be slightly biased, as I can do well in the four player King game but horribly poorly in the two player King and CTS gametypes. Multiwinia, you see, is also like an RTS in that I enjoy playing it but suck horribly.
Domination
The goal in Domination is to control all of the Spawn Points on the map. While I wasn’t able to play it, it’s fairly easy to picture how the game will play out. It will be a good introduction to the other gametypes, as it will teach the value of spawn control without forcing you to worry about secondary conditions.
Domination, even more than the other variants, will likely work better with multiple opponents. The game is built on the principle of positive reinforcement: the rich become richer, the poor become poorer. As you lose Spawn Points you have a smaller army to defend with while your opponent has a larger, and so it will become increasingly harder to mount a comeback. If there are two or more enemies for you to fight you can at least hope to become a third world power (in the original sense of the term), slowly building reinforcements as the two (or more) main armies destroy each other. Or you can be double teamed; that’s also a possibility, I suppose.
When a team controls no Spawn Points for 30 seconds, they will be eliminated. In the playable multi-team gametypes there was an option for ‘Retribution Mode’ which periodically gives an eliminated player a powerup, though I’m not sure if that ever will give them the chance to re-enter the game.
King of the Hill
King of the Hill will be familiar to anyone who’s played any number of video games, or who has ever been 6 years old. You need to have your Multiwinians inside a circular ‘hill’ — which can also have a smaller concentric hill inside — and score points either for the number of hills you control (the default) or for the number of Multiwinians inside each hill.
There is always, at least in the preview maps, a Spawn Point near each hill. The incumbent hill resident then obviously has the advantage of getting reinforcements in the middle of a fight, and so my general strategy was to send my first batch of troops towards a hill to slow down my opponents while my first resupply (which comes quickly at the start of a game) headed towards the Spawn Point.
The Holy Tree, the four player King map, is essentially the shape of a square. Teams spawn in the center of each side, and there are hills (and additional Spawn Points) in each corner. The namesake of the map is also a hill in the center, though in the games I played I generally captured the hills to my left and right and held them while the computer fought over the rest.
Capture the Statue
Capture the Statue will also be familiar to anyone who has played a First Person Shooter, but with a slight twist. The statues are massive when compared to the diminutive Multiwinians, so they have to gather underneath it like ants and carry it slowly back to the scoring area. An opposing force can kill the carriers and cause them to drop it; if it’s on the side of a hill it has a chance of breaking, after which I assume the Multiwinians’ mothers will lecture them about the virtues of sharing.
There are different statues that spawn, either randomly or by rotation. They don’t seem to have any impact on the gameplay, but I do enjoy seeing my green army carrying a giant gold effigy that says ‘YOUR AD HERE.’
There was only one two player map, Mountain of Lost Souls, in the preview, but I can see a three or four player game being an epic struggle, with the carrying team harried by the others on their way back. Even a two player game can be hectic, though, as the available map has two statue spawns that divide your forces and attention.
Assault, Rocket Riot, Blitzkreig
As we weren’t able to play the other gametypes, and there haven’t been Multiwinia Monday videos made for them yet, the only information I can provide is from the ‘How to Play’ section of the preview build.
In Assault, teams alternate on offense and defense. The defenders are given a stronger position and equipment, while the attackers have a larger force and more reinforcements. They have to break into the defender’s base and capture all the Control Stations. Once they do they can activate the Pulse Bomb and win; if they fail before the Pulse Bomb counts down to 0, the defenders win.
Rocket Riot is similar to the demo level from Darwinia: teams have to capture Solar Panels (like Spawn Points) to power a Rocket: once you have enough power you can load Multiwinians inside, and after there are 100 passengers the Rocket will launch. Once your Rocket has over 70% fuel, though, it is vulnerable to attack and can be destroyed, forcing you to start from scratch.
Blitzkrieg requires you to capture your enemy’s flag. You can only capture flags linked to your own, though, and so you must fight through the map, capturing flags that allow you to capture other flags, ultimately ending with your opponent. This seems like it will be the strategic capstone of Multiwinia, and can lead to long games with the winning faction changing at multiple points.
Ok, I’m in. Let me buy it.
Multiwinia will be released on September 19, and pre-orders are being taken as of today. There are three packages available: the digital download, for $25 (£15); the digital download and boxed version, for an additional $8.30 (£5); or the limited edition boxed set for $50 (£30).
The boxed set contains both Darwinia and Multiwinia on DVD, a coffee table art book, the eight piece set of Darwinian vs Multiwinian postcards and two foam Darwinians, all in a tin box with the Darwinia logo. Unlike certain other limited edition releases I could name, it seems as though this will be in short supply, so if you’d like one — and who wouldn’t? It seems awesome — you’d be advised to order soon. There’s only one downside: perhaps you’ve noticed that all the prices come in two flavo…urs. Introversion ships the boxes directly, and as they come from London that means shipping to the US adds an additional $20.
Buying any of the three packages will get you an unlock key 24 hours before the game launches to prevent a bottlenecks on the 19th. Boxes ‘will be shipped so as to arrive as close as possible to the 19th Sept.’
Multiwinia, like its predecessor, seems to provide fun and challenging gameplay while nimbly dodging all attempt to pigeonhole it into a clear genre. With less than a month left before release, I’m definitely looking forward to playing the other four gametypes.
