Although Introversion Software still proclaims to be the "last of the bedroom coders," Microsoft is about to propel the studio into the mainstream. The publisher has signed a deal to bring its PC hits Darwinia and Multiwinia to Xbox Live Arcade, under a new package called Darwinia+. Xbox Live Arcade has been lacking real-time strategy games, and Introversion reckons that Microsoft is preparing a Braid-level push for the game once it launches in September. Gamespot was lucky enough to be invited to Introversion's offices, not five minutes away from those of GameSpot UK, to play the game firsthand.
The new version/update of Darwinia will allow both new and longtime fans the chance to experience the acclaimed indie title, now better than ever!
"The UK-based indie games developer Introversion Software and Microsoft today announced with great delight and excitement that the legendary retro-like real-time tactics/real-time strategy game "Darwinia+" is now available on Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One via the Microsoft store." - Jonas Ek, TGG.
EDGE - Darwinia is obviously a love-letter to videogame culture, but it’s also a part of it. It doesn’t just doff its cap to a catalogue of adored classics, it undertakes to capture what made them great within its own mechanics. So your Death Squads are controlled exactly as your men in Cannon Fodder were, and hurling digital grenades into bleeping knots of the Virus has all the tactile appeal of that game’s gratifyingly simple massacres. The Virus itself bears obvious visual similarities to the antagonists of David Braben’s ’80s groundbreaker of the same name, but more importantly it also poses the same sinister threat: no one part of it is formidable, but the volume and voracity of the whole constantly threatens to overwhelm. And a less visual nod to Lemmings – the mechanic by which you command the otherwise aimless Darwinians by promoting a few to direct the rest – pulls the same miraculous trick of making you care for something simply because it refuses to be your puppet.
