Darwinia

http://www.darwinia.co.uk/

Has anyone tried out this little game yet? I keep on reading about it in magazines and stuff....but after finally trying it out...I can see why it was one of the top indie games of last year. Definately worth a checkout.......interestingly simple concept and simple graphics....but great gameplay. Its sorta like an RTS....but with a purpose....

Just the demo.
It's funny game too.

This game really interested me since it's been hyped up big time, I played it for 10 mins and then got bored and uninstalled - apparently a lot of people are doing the same. I'm not sure if things have changed yet but last time I heard anything about this game it was bombing and publishers did not want to touch it; See, using Dx9 does not sell your games!

Sucks that it's bombing ...

People talk about innovation but not too many really innovative games do all that well. It's pretty sad.

You either need to produce something mind blowing with the experience ... or you need to make something just super simple but still fun like Bejewled. I hope these times are coming to and end ... and that things will re-mature to the point that the different games start doing better. It definitely seems like during the 80's and 90's it was the innovation that sold better. I suppose that's because you couldn't really make anything all that mind blowing ... in the hollywood blockbuster sense.

Yeah, but if it's innovative but boring, it's not going to sell well, and that's fair enough. What we want is innovative and interesting. Wik and the Fable of Souls is innovative and challenging but can get kinda boring too imho.

I think they tried too hard to make a visually rich retroesque environment. Perhaps if they had followed the same rules as Geometry Wars and kept it really simple it might have been more fun, and more of a success.

Yeah, Geometry Wars is amazing. I guess it's a fact that only so many games are going to be great games. Effort is somewhat irrelavant which stinks ... I mean just stock Geometry Wars isn't hard to make as many people have demonstrated but it's a matter of striking that perfect balance and all the knockoffs that people have done ... although cool and very similar to the original are actually missing the perfectness of the original. It's just like music ... you can have the same song ... just change the mix a touch and it goes to crap. Striking the perfect balance with a game is very difficult and lucky too.

Making games is like art, most artists never get recognised, some only get recognised after they're dead! also it's like music, think of all the wannabes out there, only a few make it, they used to be bands with talent AND marketing, but now it seems that *just* marketing will suffice ... shudder.

I guess it's enough when a one publisher wants to touch it...I know It would be enough for me ;)

http://storefront.steampowered.com/v2/?area=game&AppId=1500

I dunno. Syndicate did pretty well.

I also think they took the 'inside a computer' metaphor too far, rather than making the controls accessible from within the game context.

@Bouncerm that's distribution, not publishing. I was referring to retail publishers also.

I would normally stop playing a game within the first 3-5 minutes if it didnt intrigued me enough(that goes for nearly any game I play...except for a few..). I ended up playing the demo for about an hour last night....i had to stop to get some sleep cause that damm time consuming thing call "work" always gets in the way the next day. I'm actually looking forward to it again later on today...... may actually buy the game too.

Now this is definately a rarity for me....the last indie game to ever hold my attention for this long was a little 3DRAD game, but remade in Blitz3d game called Juno Nemesis (which I'm just realizing has the same concept of fighting "bugs" in a digital world)....



I think thats one of the reasons why I like it so much....because of the visuals...

I think there has always been a steady stream of innovative titles, just we have a selective memory where games are concerned.

Right through the 80's and 90's there probably weren't more than 5-6 killer games that stood out and dozens of drivel same old titles.

There's been some fantatsic games in the last 5 years, probably more decent games than I remember from the previous 10.

hmm, I've got to disagree. I agree that there have been some cool games in the last 5 years but my gaming shelf includes many classic games since Doom. Also 80s and 90s had C64 games, Amiga Games etc, stuff like Laser Squad, that was pretty innovative at the time. I could list loads, but I don't have the time soz.

Personaly I think that there is an old saying hollywood has the right idea when it comes to originality and sucess:

Always be the second to do something new.

The idea being that the first person will do much of the ground work, creating the market, finding out the pit falls etc. You can then learn from the mistakes made by this orignial idea, tinker with it a bit having seen what did and didn't work and release an "original" game, that hasn't got nearly as many barriers to its sucess.

put it this way, 80's and 90's thats 20 years. If there were 5 good games that stood out each year thats 100 amazing games. V's 25 in the last 5 years.

I'm hard pressed to come up with 100 utterly brilliant games from those first 2 decades, I might be able to cough up 20 if I'm pressed, and can come up with almost as many newer games in the past 5 years that stood out for me.

Hmmm... I think you'll be surprised how many good games you've forgotten about which, when somebody mentions it, you'll think "Blimey, yep that was good!"
The diversity of games (or games that sold) made something for everybody. Today, top games are (generally) FPS.

I loved this game, shows people still have talent.

Darwinia's a really nice game, I like it a lot. It's not very well balanced though - you spend quite a lot of your time waiting for resources to be collected, or sending in wave after wave of your attacking units until you can beat back the enemies a bit. Some of the missions can take several hours but you can save&quit in the middle of them. Other than that, it's pretty good fun.

There's an article over on Eurogamer about Introversion's next game, which looks absolutely fantastic!

http://eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=62477

It's pretty funny that FPS's are so popular right now ... there was a time right around 1993 - 1994 that I was reading reviews of 3DO games basically saying the genre was tired and there wasn't anything left to do LOL ... such visionaries those game reviewers!

FPSs are the match-3s of the mainstream games market.

I'm curious - which 25?

Anyway, here's my list of cool games through the ages (in no particular order):

Zaxxon, Galaxians, Joust, Temple of Apshai, Wizard of Wor, 1942, Commando, Elite, Kung-fu Master, Virus, Action Biker, Kickstart 2, Space Taxi, Bionic Commando, Donkey Kong, Pirates!, Champions of Krynn, Hostages, Street Fighter, Jetpac, Pssst, Sabre Wulf, Frank Brunos Boxing, Double Dragon, Tetris, Super Mario Brothers, Shinobi, Afterburner, Burnin' Rubber, Test Drive, World Games, Street Rod, Skate or Die, Cybernoid, Gauntlet, Super Hang-on, Pacmaina, Hyperdrome, Impossible Mission, Ikari Warriors, Warlords, Spy vs. spy, Prince of persia, Fist II - The legend continues, Hypasports, Microprose Soccer, Ninja Gaiden, Spy Hunter, Airborne Ranger, 4D Sports Driving, Syndicate, Silent Service, Dune 2, KGB, Zak McKraken and the Alien Mindbenders, Panzer General, Last Ninja, Close Combat, Civilization, Zeewolf, Bubba'n'stix, Skidmarks and Flashback come to mind.

Defcon sounds sweet!

And Darwinia isnt bad, but I get stuck in the demo really fast.

I'm one of those that found Darwinia boring. I gave it a fair try-out but I found it an ultimately emtpy experience. Perhaps I'm missing something...

Dev say they want innovation. The mass market says, yeah innovation would be cool, as long as it is accessable and fun. and what they really mean to say is, I'll play anything that is accessable and fun.

The FPS concept is fun, that has been proven. It is really easy to get into, and it simulates how people think pretty well.

That is why it is popular. It doesn't have to innovate to be fun.

This is also why innovative but not really fun or accessable games fail.

If you are going to foce the player to learn a whole new scheme of play it has to be A. Fun to learn, B. Easy to learn, or C. Already popular and uses that to inspire people to learn.

Why don't most people switch their fav genre of games? Why don't people who have never played a certain genre really never get into that genre once it is well established?

Because the genre has matured and no longer supports the Fun to learn or Easy to learn concepts... only popularituy will draw people into the genre after that point.

Lets look at your diablo style game... The scheme of control builds on itself and every game that works like diablo since D2 has had mainly one audiance... Diablo players.

Why? Because they aren't really fun to learn to play like Diablo was. They aren't really easy to learn when they build themselves up on the concepts and add many new things that complicate the system or have lost the intuitive nature of their control by reliance on history. And they aren't nearly as popular and don't bring people in like diablo did.

Diablo did a lot of not really new things, but combined them in a new way that was really fun to play for its time. Even fun to play now. And it established concepts that were taken for granted later... or popularised those concepts... Mana blue, Health red, shape and size based inventory management, and things like the shift to stand still and attack in place concept... that was really well explained of discovered in Diablo but taken for granted in other games... You will have gained a level, and learned what red and blue pots do long before you have to worry about their fit in your inventory... you learned the potions easily because your health orb was red and mana orb blue... other games would not have the blue and red tints and then you mgiht wonder why red potions heal you and blue one make your mana increase...

I other words... Innovation isn't fun. Innovation can be part of fun. And we have been neglecting it and our games are starting to get stagnant and boring... to us... and sppn to the mass market.

Right now the mass market doesn't have any problem buying new FPSs.. and if we keep adding new features to the mix.. like HL2 physics... it will keep selling.. thats is evolution.. and there is nothing wrong with it, really... but eventually you will evolve to the point that you really can't do much else... that is when you hit a brick wall... that is why you need to innovate... make some new genres or new concepts... drasticly different but fun and easy to learn....

Thats why Katamari broke out like it did... easy to learn, fun to learn, it became really popular and it was innovative. If really simple.

I think you hit the nail on the head.

My 2 cents on that ... innovative is fun for developers because it pushes them to use their skills in new ways instead of remaking the same game using the same thought process and skill set ... only bigger.

Gamers ... yeah they just care about fun period. Geometry Wars is my newest example. Anyone on these forums could have made that game ... and numerous examples are popping up. Not really an innovative game ... nothing technically staggering (except maybe that cool grid) but FUN and BALANCED GAMEPLAY!

DampeS8n: Yeah I think what you say is true. For example on the Indiegamer forum half the people are saying "make something innovative that you will truely enjoy making", sure this is noble but not necessarily practical. The other half are making clones so they can make some money. At the end of the day if you make a clone you *may* do OK but probably not FANTASIC cos it's a clone. If you make something innovative it'll probably fail, but there is just a small chance it'll be a smash hit. With those odds, most developers prefer the safe bet of clones. Hence Xmas Bonus of course. However, clones aren't bad, I think (and many others will vouch for this) that it's pretty darn good fun and addictive (if you like that sort of game) because I spent a long time making the gameplay smooth and balanced and putting in lots of levels to make you feel "progress". Some match-3s just don't have the right feel, I tracked some of them on the portals and they didn't make as many sales as mine, and I know this is because the consumer instinctively feels when something is more fun than say a more sluggish but perhaps more "polished" looking game.

in commercial games Developers don't always have that much freedom, and key elements of the gameplay may ultimately be a deal breaker dictated by current market trends.

With indie development where the stakes are not so high, you do get the freedom to make the games the way you want them, but not always the luxury of time and financial and technical resources with which to make them work.

I think that in the next 5 years the potential for independently developed games to really do well. Particularly if more next gen consoles prove willing to let us onto their mainstream platforms. Would be really nice if Nintendo who are more open to ideas internaly, would let some rookies with the skills get their games out there at reasonable cost.

Microsoft have opened the doors to something new, and I really hope that everyone else follows suite.

Except the part about FPS games being fun.

I enjoy FPSs, so do lots of people... Its a matter of opinion... I can't stand sports.. but I understand that lots of people enjoy watching them.

I was talking about this general statement:

What is ironic is that Dev. really tend to not innovate much themselves... its a lot of work trying to find something new, and it also isn't often profitable. So most dev. Indie and Mass market, look at what has been profitable and then put thier spin on that idea.

I'm going to call that GTA syndrome. What did everyone do right after GTA 3 was a big hit... and more so after Vice city?

We started to see a lot of free-roaming worlds coming along. We started to see a lot of clones.

Breaking new ground isn't fun. It isn't a blast to code or design. So when someone else breaks the ground for us we jump all over it.

The Indie crowd isn't immune... look at all the bejewled clones and tetris and breakout/arkanoids... How about card games and board games.. they are big for the online market... why? cause they are fun to code? no.. they are just easy to code, and can be profitable.

So few truely groundbreaking games that will also be loads of fun to play even get started... Because the innovation seems to come from a concept that has a game wraped around it hastily.

I understand that from a big game design team with 20+ team members who act like machines and do small parts... Orchestrating all the new ideas would cost a lot of time and money to do... but a small team or even a one man team could easily coddle and preen a great new concept into a great game.... Why don't they?

Why don't you?

A lot of reasons, but I think the main one is that great new ideas are very rare whether you're in a large team or on your own.

I don't believe that... I have maybe 1 or 2 really great ideas a week.. I imagine I'm nothing special...

They just don't ever get made.. and they seem daunting to start... thats what I think anyways

Same here Dampe... weird, isn't it?

Not really weird... i think thats just howmost people are.... I have a good excuse... I really have no idea what I am doing when it comes to programming... hahaha... I only have a really basic understanding of it all and wouldn't know how to go about many of my ideas.

But I would imagine for others it is the fact that it would take months to finish and it is hard to keep focused.. I don't see all that many indie designers working from a design document... and if they are.. it seems to be a pretty weak one.... Focus is the real key...

In a small team you don't have it because they don't know any better... in a big one you lose focus due to the number of people..

I really hope everyone that reads this understands just how important good planning is... and that nothing will save your ass better than a good design doc and a good plan of attack....

I made a doc for XMas Bonus that expanded over time. It is 24 pages, 11,000 words long. It also includes ideas that sounded cool but I was never going to put in the game. It's very important with a big doc to prioritise things into MUST DO, Maybe, and Unlikely or your own simialr hierarchy. This helps you focus as Dampes8N puts it.

There are actually loads of really cool indie games, but they tend to take longer to make.
Also, lots of those retro remakes are just released for free or for one of the 800 million retro remake contests where resolution is turned down on purpose. (I won't get further into my thoughts on the topic).


For example, Morphlings seems extremely interesting, has a design document, has really nice graphics, and took (is taking?) a long time to develop. Cletus Clay also has the appearance that there is more to it than meets the eye...


I'm starting to be really annoyed by this whole free-roaming game idea. Sure, it's a neat idea, but 90% of the time it ends up absolutely appallingly boring! Look at Freelancer. An excellent game, except that all the interesting story-driven parts are seperated by randomly selected missions in free-roaming mode. This would be fine if these missions were not one of about 4 random missions occuring in random places, and if they had more than 3 voice clips to liven things up.

What I want, and I think lots of other people want, is a sort-of non-linear game, where there is still a deep and immersive storyline that properly involves the player and has a lot of those important elements to liven things up, such as voices. The only kind of games that can get away with lack of linearness are things like Spore, The Sims, and Sim City (strangely, those examples are all from the same guy).


Computer games aren't the only things that end up with people playing it safe by remaking classics though! Look at all the board games there are. Make a group for each different concept. How many groups are there? How many games are there in each group?


I can't say this is a bad thing. It means that my idea, which I still dare not speak of, has no chance of being done by anyone else for at least 10 years ;)


I have to agree... Darwinia seemed a bit slow. Its retro graphics that aren't afraid to admit that the game is not running on hardware from 50 years ago are really cool at some points, but it gave me a few headaches so I never really got into it. Also seemed a bit slow... I realize that it gets more interesting, but the start was just... aghhhh...

I do think most people are like that ... however great ideas often turn to mush when you implement them! I think everyone does come up with ideas they think are great ... implementation is the real test to see if it works. More than half the time a cool idea sucks when you actually get it working. Of course you'll never know unless you implement it. I'm a pretty action oriented person and I at least prototype to some degree most of my ideas ... they don't always work in reality.

Darwinia is a pretty nifty game in my opinion. Everything seems fairly well polished. The objectives are simplistic but there's room for some emergent gameplay that makes things fun.

The pathfinding can be a bit iffy at times (traversing the Containment level with 200 Darwinians was borderline a nightmare) and I'm still not entirely sold on the Darwinian control scheme.

I don't know if it's a game I'll be playing a year from now but for the time being it's at the top of my playlist.

What I find most interesting about Darwinia is their use of procedural content generation. I find it intriguing simply because procedurally-generated content was a central theme in the talks at GDC2005.

Perhaps the 'cool' factor in next-generation games won't necessarily be how the graphics look but how they were generated and the interesting ways they can be used?

Wow, I finally played it and I think it's superb. First game in a while that seems very imaginative. It has a Pikmin sort of feel but has much better combat and cool guide system. I really like it. I'll have to pick it up for my next independent game of the month.