Darwinia

2026-01-24
Darwinia being a successful game in 2005 is like how the most successful animals on Earth were the scurrying little rodents after the dinosaurs were wiped out. This was the Dark Ages of PC games and there were like 3 games on Steam so when a piddling little RTS with no meat on its bones scurried out of its hole, the starving masses of PC gamers clapped their hands with glee. Only to grow bored after 2 hours because they realized they bought an overly simplistic and boring game that felt more like a sandbox than a real strategy game.

I mean christ I remember having no games to play but then I wonder was it really that bad? Yes. The big PC releases in 2005 were Civ 4, Battlefield 2, FEAR, and Psychonauts and then some also-rans in Guild Wars, AOE3 and Black & White 2. And for a sizeable portion of this website, who was teething or nonexistent when these games came out, they’ll say “That’s peak, no cap” and yes, you’re right, it is “peak” but that was it. I played every single one of those games when they came out. But once you were done you turned to shit like Darwinia. It is crazy, almost quaint really, to look back at how few games we were getting.

But just like mammals rapidly evolved to fill the vacuum left by the dinosaurs, so too did PC games recover and evolve. Only since then PC games have metastasized into a monstrous, cancerous blob consuming everything in their path. To the point that they seem to be consuming themselves, with the entire industry imploding on itself. But shit, I'd still take the current state of games over fucking Darwinia, man.

2023-08-05
A pared down strategy game. I must have played this in high school when it came out. One of the first indie games in that wave that came out on Steam. And I kind of just found it boring. It's so minimal visually and the actual gameplay is just kind of fine. It reminds me of Minesweeper or something. I wanted a Civilization or Starcraft or something really meaty and it just wasn't. I think it gets too much credit because it was one of those indie darlings but it just wasn't that great of a game.