Review: Multiwinia

[unangbangkay]

Review: Multiwinia

Is it possible to feel empathy toward a flock of 2-D sprites? This week's guest reviewer thinks so.

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[Nimbus]

Very good review, although I think you over-empisised the importance of officers. It is possible (Although difficult) to win a game without using them, and for small groups of MWGs the left-click-selection control usually works better. I wouldn't say that the gameplay "revolves" around them, even if they are somewhat important.

EDIT:

"The aptly-named Randomizer takes this element of chance even further by occasionally introducing crates with a temporary global effect, such as a "mega rage" that increases the damage output of all units or a "spawn mania" that briefly quintuples the output of every working spawn point. Some crates even trigger "crate mania," which spawn dozens of crates everywhere. The randomizer helps impart Multiwinia with a hectic, unpredictable pace that belies the game's otherwise simplistic mechanics."

This is completely and utterly wrong. That is not what the randomiser does. It creates a small area on the ground where the MWGs change color, randomly, every few seconds.

Also:

...The author apparently also hasn't noticed the "Hold SHIFT to move faster" message.

 

[domicius]

Nice review - it's great to read a review that captures the tone and the experience of the game, rather than just covering the gameplay points in a long laundry list.

Just a comment re: "Perhaps simplicity breeds empathy"

Indeed it does - the simpler a drawing, the more humanity we tend to add to it ourselves. Scott McCloud?s "Understanding Comics" is a very good (and fun) introduction to the how and why simplified character representation works so well.

 

[Angron]

good review, great game
playing it still since when it came out, its truely epic, good job to interversion for making great games without needing a huge budget and team

 

[Chaos Marine]

Left clicking and holding creates a spinning void like blue glow. This can be used to highlight Multiwinians and send give them orders.

 

[unangbangkay]

This is completely and utterly wrong. That is not what the randomiser does. It creates a small area on the ground where the MWGs change color, randomly, every few seconds.

Also:

...The author apparently also hasn't noticed the "Hold SHIFT to move faster" message.

I apologize for the mistake. For the most part I had to eyeball what a particular crate does, and in retrospect I confused the randomizer (attack) with the option to stick to "basic" crate drops only.

As for "hold SHIFT", I very much did so, but the issue remained the same: Darwinia's control system doesn't quite hold up to Multiwinia's pacing.

 

[Nimbus]

This is completely and utterly wrong. That is not what the randomiser does. It creates a small area on the ground where the MWGs change color, randomly, every few seconds.

Also:

...The author apparently also hasn't noticed the "Hold SHIFT to move faster" message.

I apologize for the mistake. For the most part I had to eyeball what a particular crate does, and in retrospect I confused the randomizer (attack) with the option to stick to "basic" crate drops only.

As for "hold SHIFT", I very much did so, but the issue remained the same: Darwinia's control system doesn't quite hold up to Multiwinia's pacing.

Perhaps you should check out the Introversion forums?

As to the control scheme, it is designed specifically so that people with a keyboard/mouse setup wouldn't have nay advantage over people playing with a 360 controller for when Darwinia + is released on xBox live.