I was eager to see what Introversion had made now that they had a bit of experience. Making a game is a hard process, but it can get easier as you do it again. Even though it's a wonderful game, Uplink had some rough edges to it. How would the team learn from their previous efforts and improve upon what they had done?

Of course, one of the toughest things about being an independent developer is that you are often known for your first game. Introversion made an interesting decision to make a game in a very different genre than Uplink. Of course, part of the freedom of being an independent is that you can pick your projects on your own.

It's important to note that this game defies categorization. Like Uplink, the game doesn't follow in the footsteps of any particular genre of gaming. The game could be best described as a lively mix of real-time strategy and action. The developers themselves describe the game's genre as "action strategy" in the promotional literature.

The first thing that you notice about the game is that it simply oozes with style. Upon starting the game up you are given a variety of cute little introductions, often reflecting the obvious inspiration for the game: the old computer demo scene. One introduction is a scrolling bit of text reminding you of the old "cracked by" screens you saw on games back in the day. Another shows off a software ray-tracer program where you can adjust the parameters of the scene. But, it's not all old stuff; one of the introductions is the now familiar "Matrix" green cascading screen with little Darwinians instead of the various symbols.

The storyline is done in wonderful style as well. You're visiting Darwinia, which is a virtual theme park populated by little bits of AI called Darwinians. Unfortunately, a virus has broken out and the programmer of the park, a legendary computer game programmer from the days of home-kit computers, has asked you to help him out. So, you go through the different levels of the game helping to accomplish goals which will help rid the world of the virus infestation.

Then, finally, when you get to the actual game the style comes to a head. The graphics are obviously retro inspired; for example, the little Darwinians look like countless stick figures from the early days of both computer and console gaming. This game isn't just a bunch of mindless eye candy sent to distract you from the empty gameplay, it's there to entertain you, especially those of us that enjoyed the early days of gaming.

Unfortunately, this all falls apart a bit once you start playing the game. The game is fun enough, but the gameplay doesn't seem particularly deep or engaging. I could accept that the game might be a bit lighter than I might like, but the game is plagued with a, frankly, terrible user interface.

The game tries to keep the commands simple. Click on a unit to select it, click on the ground while you have a selected unit to move that unit to that location. Unfortunately, this has the usual problems of accidentally moving one unit next to another unit when you were only trying to select that one unit. Because of the rather simplistic AI, this can often lead to the death of your units.

The game's promotional literature brags about having a game screen free of the clutter of an intrusive user interface. However, the game requires reading a lot of text just to get the basics of the UI. One of the primary ways to interact with the game is to hold down the alt key to bring up some full-screen menus. Unfortunately, the game still goes on in the background while you're dealing with these menus, and you can't directly affect the game while holding down the alt key.

The main menu you see when you hold down the alt key is a gesture-based drawing area that will create various types of troops or engage different options based on the gesture. For example, drawing a triangle clockwise will summon a squad of fighters that you then have to place near a friendly spot in the world. The most significant problem is that the system rarely recognizes the shapes, so you spend a lot of time fighting with this tool. Even a simple shape, such as the three sides of a square that summons an engineer, is not recognized about 30% of the time. This makes for some frustration as you're trying to summon an engineer quickly before the viruses wipe out the squad holding the position you want to summon an engineer next to. And, forget about more complex shapes, such as the three-point sunburst needed to command your squad to use the air strike secondary weapon. I got that to work maybe 5% of the time. Even the rocket special weapon, which is an arrow, was difficult. I finally found a two stroke "shortcut" which allowed me to request the rocket special weapon instead of trying to do the four stroke arrow. I'm not sure if the shortcut was intentional or not, but it saved me from pulling out all my hair.

It's a shame to see this UI really hurt the game so badly. It was nice that the developers were trying to do something out of the ordinary, but I think this is one case where something a bit more standard would have done a lot better. A more reliable UI would have allowed the player to focus on the cool style and fun core gameplay.

Another big disappointment is the simplistic AI for the units. For a game with a story based upon the learning AI of the little Darwinians, the units were rather dumb. When told to move, units would take a straight-line path to the destination. This was particularly disastrous for your squad units, because they would sometimes try to go through the "water" which damaged them. It was frustrating to try to move different squads to different locations, only to see them arrive severely damaged due to a run-in with some water. In one of the earliest levels I lost several squads when they ran into an instant-death force field while I wasn't looking.

The individual units also weren't very smart. For example, the squads didn't use their weapons very often when they were not directly controlled by the player. This meant that there was very little use in creating multiple squads unless you were willing to hop back and forth from group to group firing their weapons manually. This really reduced the strategy aspect of the game, in my opinion.

But the most disappointing problem is probably the lack of meaningful strategic gameplay. There are few resources to manage, so the most effective tactic in clearing out a virus infected area was to take a nearby control tower at which you could spawn squads, then keep throwing suicide troops at the problem area until you cleared it out. If there was a lengthy trip from the control tower to the fighting area, it sometimes made sense to create multiple squads and send them along so you could switch to another squad once the first had wiped itself out. In most cases, however, additional squads were worthless since they really didn't use their weapons unless you had direct control over them. This meant that the ideal strategy was to have one squad and multiple engineers picking up souls to recycle into Darwinians. This lack of meaningful options made the game feel devoid of any meaningful strategy on my part.

I think this is a real shame, because the core gameplay was pretty fun. It was a blast to take a squad and go in guns and grenades a-blazin' and clear out an infested area. It was also fun to guide around the Darwinians and try to keep them safe from harm to accomplish specific goals. However, I really wish the game had a bit more strategic depth to it in order to keep my attention. I think that perhaps if I had been able to get the alternate weapons for the squads working, the ones that were really difficult shapes that were rarely recognized, it would have made the action part of the game more interesting for me. As it stands, though, the lack of ability to switch weapons meant that the game felt very repetitive as I looked for the high ground and blasted the enemies from that advantage over and over again.

Overall, Darwinia is a game that shows a lot of promise but unfortunately fails to deliver on it. As a child, I enjoyed the games of the 80's, and the story, style, and presentation really speak to me. I wish the game had been a bit deeper strategically and that I didn't feel that most of my time was wasted fighting against the inscrutable UI and the simplistic AI.

Graphics: Very good. The graphics show some real technical prowess, even though the game isn't just eye candy. They borrow heavily from the early days of computer and console gaming, and fit the style of the game wonderfully. There were some issues in dealing with 3D terrain at odd angles, but overall I wish more games would use an interesting, non-photorealistic graphical presentation as well as this game did.

Sound: Also very good. The developers took a lot of effort into making the game sound 8-bit. The sounds were varied and interesting, and the music was very atmospheric and ethereal, a pleasure to listen to.

User Interface: Poor. It's a shame that the game was essentially ruined by this single aspect of the game. I think that a more standard interface would have worked well here, and it would have let the innovation in the presentation and the genre really shine through. I fear most people won't be able to get past this part of the game and they'll miss a rare opportunity to see an otherwise really great game.

Style: The game has an original style. The storyline is fun and interesting, a break from the tired clichйs you find in most other games. The references and obvious inspiration from the early days of gaming were a real treat to someone who has played games as long as I have.

Gameplay: Average. I think the gameplay could have been a bit deeper. Some of my issues with the gameplay undoubtedly come from my problems with the UI. There's enough other aspects to make me wish the game had a bit more polish in this area. I think there's a really great and fun core gameplay here that's struggling to get out from under all the rest of the game. I would have enjoyed a bit more meaningful strategy and planning in the game.

Extras: The game features a map editor which is unlocked after you complete the game. I didn't play around with it much, but the tools seemed to be powerful if a bit user-unfriendly. After playing around with one level I tried to play it and the game crashed on me.

Overall: I had high expectations for this game and I really wanted to like it. The setting and style really spoke to me and I enjoyed it a lot. I think that the Introversion team is still top-notch game developers, and I hope they have enough resources to do another game after Darwinia. I hope they have learned the lessons from the previous two games and that their next game will once again take the world by storm.

The guys at Introversion have recently announced a new patch for the game. They have listened to feedback about the UI and complaints about the gestures system. They have said they will implement a more traditional UI in next version of the demo and the full version of the game.

I think this is great news; as I said, the game has a fun core but the UI distracts from that fun core. I think this would go a long way towards making the game a really great and innovative experience.

The Introversion crew says they don't agree with the feedback but that they know this is an important issue for other people. As a developer, I know how hard it is to swallow your pride and rework something that you thought was really neat. But, a true sign of professionalism is in being willing to move beyond making something that pleases just you. I applaud the Introversion guys on their professionalism and hope that this new patch allows them to introduce this game to a wider audience.