Darwinia, Defcon Devs Talk About Their “Truly Terrible” 2008

@Jazhuis: Uplink would work incredibly well on the iPhone, I feel.

god, how depressing.

Cellsong

@Jazhuis: I am seconding the multi-cross/platform /uplink love. Though I might realllly need k/b/m support. Or an iphone version.

@Jazhuis: Darwinia+ is (as announced) a XBLA only release. I can't imagine that they're releasing it for PS3, and a PC release would be redundant.

Here's my problem with Introversion: Uplink was a brilliant, innovative game that was unlike virtually any game around. Even today, I wish I had a good version of it on my phone or iPod Touch. Darwinia and Multiwinia were/are just mediocre RTS games. The only innovative aspect was the procedural generation of the visual assets.

Defcon was a near-return to form, but it had far too little replay value for me.

To me, they should do what they should have done a year or two ago: a sequel to Uplink.

mattharvest

Multiwinia wasn't too bad a game; it just didn't have much depth to it.

To Chris and company at Introversion:

Let me know how many copies of Darwinia+ I need to personally buy across every platform I have available to me to help you remain solvent. All of your games thus far have given me hours of fun and headache, and I can't wait to see more. Oh, and a Defcon DS? Count me in!

PS: I know you all really prefer to create new, different games as often as possible, but if you were to make a massively multiplayer Uplink, it would be the only game I would ever consider paying a subscription fee for.

@BORNtoDIE3: ...thoughts?

What a miserable read. Especially his bit about feeling like an "Old Indie Developer" scrabbling for attention in 2008 The Year of Indie Games. I have been so inspired by Introversion's work, but I don't keep up on their play-by-play, and had no idea things had gotten this bad.

I wish them the absolute best. His narrative is pretty much heartbreaking.

Multiwinia was a game that had great potential. The problem was that it simply didn't work. It was primarily a multiplayer game, but the multiplayer part of it was so incredibly broken. I even went through the trouble of opening ports on the router and everything, still no go. PC game developers really need to learn to use the same sort of NAT traversal technology that Skype uses.

Also, Multiwinia had a lot of very basic flaws. For example, nowhere in the control configuration did it allow you to invert the y axis on the mouse. That didn't bother me, but a large number of PC gamers can't deal with it, such as my room mate.

It seems lately like there are lots of really great games that all have a few very small flaws, but those small flaws ruin the whole show.

I hope PC game devs out there learn from QuakeLive. It's the best game in town right now.

From reading it if Darwina+ fails on XBLA then they are probably finished, I really hope that doesn't happen.

Jellocakes

@MrGone1980: ... not

BORNtoDIE3

Darwinia was an astoundingly good game.

@MrGone1980: Careful, getting thoughts from someone that pans a truly awesome game like Darwinia with such an eloquent response as "not" might cause this intellectual giant's brain to splode! Even if you hate the genera one can't deny this impressive indy title. Kinda like Centipede on steroids.

Always wanted to play Darwinia but my PC sucked too much to play it. that will change today my friends (new computer on the FedEx truck as I type). Darwinia is one of the first games I'll be BUYING and playing.

FoxHoundADAM

@mattharvest: DEFCON is an interesting game, in that the best games are those you make up on the fly.

By that, I mean that playing single player is fun, but you're right in saying that there's only so much replay value. Multiplayer, however, is like a giant online version of Diplomacy, with nukes. The fun isn't the strategy of moving the game pieces around to destroy your enemy, it's the lying, backstabbing, and triple-crossing the other players that is necessary to win...err..lose the least. It really is a completely different social game on top of a vector graphic game about nuclear holocaust.

@Estel: PC/Mac/Linux, you mean. Introversion has been wonderful about being platform-agnostic.

PS to Introversion: There's nothing wrong with having a good working relationship with Microsoft, until you fall into the trap of only developing for their stuff. Please continue multi-platform development for the above operating systems.

@Optimaximal: I thought Darwinia was greater than the sum of its parts. The soundtrack was phenomenal, the graphics were pleasing and the writing was top-notch. Maybe I'm alone here but I really found myself absorbed into its fictional reality. The pace of the game was really unusual and I probably played it in one unplannned sitting as a result. And the game got me into that incredible chiptune artist Trash80.

Maybe part of my love of it is the fact that I don't like RTS games at all. Darwinia was an RTS for the rest of us!

Defcon & Uplink were both excellent, but I have a feeling those games are for the few and not the many. Darwinia seemed geared for a wider audience.

I have sadly never even messed with Multiwinia, but when originally reading about the concept it seemed a bit too far-fetched considering the mechanics of the original. I imagine they don't lend well to a multiplayer experience.

@mattharvest: That's half the problem - they refuse to make sequels, even if they improve on the original.

Multiwinia essentially failed because it was the long lost multi-player component to Darwinia - if it was a free update accompanied by a renewed retail push for existing gamers, most would probably have stomached it - as it stands, it was disappointingly incomplete.

I purchased the collectors edition, in its big tin, because it came with the original Darwinia (I already have Defcon & Uplink) but I only really touched on Multiwinia once, giving up when I realised it really was pretty poor.

Then you have Subversion - FFS, either reveal some details about it or stop pegging it as the next best thing.

Optimaximal

@MrGone1980:

... but... thinking... is... hard!

Indeed it was a good game.

well i bought darwinia and uplink off steam not too long ago.

abort_user

More developers should be this candid. Software piracy would decrease if people could see the emotional end-result of denying a company its profit.

Wolfnave

Man that's depressing reading. I'm not entirely sure what else I can do for them. I bought all of their games in the big tin Anthology pack a couple of months ago. This small team has given me more enjoyment than most huge teams with massive budgets ever did. (particularly Uplink).

But with no other product for me to purchase I guess I'll just have to resort to buying merchandise I don't necessary need to help them out.

Long live "the last of the bedroom programmers"!

Repsode

I think my wallet is going to get a little lighter...

I got Multiwinia during Steam's holiday sale, thoroughly enjoyed it for a few days, and I still go back to it for a quick deathmatch every few weeks.

fizzlefist

Multiwinia failed because it was taking a game that was already 3 years old and niche and tried to sell a multiplayer component as a standalone product. This is now how you sell games.

It's like selling Half-Life 2 and then 3 years later coming out with HL2: Deathmatch and selling it at the same price. This is not how you sell things to people, even if you are an indie dev group.

If Chris Delay actually wanted to sell a previous game for a second time, he should have done it with Uplink. For years everyone's been asking for a multiplayer Uplink game and instead he gave us Multiwinia. Great job mister indie developer, you followed what you wanted instead of what consumers wanted and now you're stuck in a shitty situation. Never coulda seen that coming, huh?

@Jellocakes: that's sad.. I never got very far into darwinia, and unfortunately at this point in my life don't have much time for learning rts's, but I loved what I saw...
I was really rooting for these guys...

I think the "cuteness" of un-animated 2D people wore off REAL QUICK with darwinia. So their next un-animated 2D people game was a flop. And their NEXT un-animated 2D people game will also flop.

If a game looks like it was easy to create, you will not get much respect. The "retro look" only works once.

hellokitty808

I supported you guys!

cfive3