GamingShogun writes, "Introversion Software has finally launched their highly-anticipated follow-up to Darwinia, called Multiwinia: Survival of the Flattest. The standard edition of the game will cost $24.90 dollars while the collector's edition, featuring foam Darwinians as well as the full version of the original game and even an art book, will run you $49.90 dollars..."
The world of Multiwinia is strange. Each mission reveals a bit more about the infection that plagued the Darwinians and the subsequent wars that followed, but the plot doesn't unspool conventionally-nor do any of the other elements, really. Your units are brightly colored 2-D figures that resemble paper dolls. Holding down the left click button will gather a number of them to command, and right clicking on a single one will promote the single Multiwinian to an officer. You can personally command your troops to attack or delegate to your officers. In addition to Multiwinians, you'll gain command of turrets, troop transports, radar dishes, and spawning points.
Ever since the original release of Darwinia, there has been demand for a sequel. Its entertaining combination of action and strategy was very effective and only lacked in one area: it didn't have any support for cooperative or competitive multiplayer. As such, any sequel would ideally have another excellent campaign and an attached multiplayer version with the same mechanics.
Unfortunately, Multiwinia has neither. It takes Darwinia from simple, yet elegant to just simple. The main disappointment is that there is no campaign or story whatsoever. What's worse, though, is that the strategy has been reduced to simple mass troop movement and placement. Instead of being able to create your own squads, armor, etc., and research new technologies as the game continues, you're stuck with crate drops and simple orders of darwinians. The latter is definitely the worse of the two.
Multiwinia is a multi-player version of Darwinia, where players take command of digital stick figures and have them battle it out on vector graphic islands. Though the amount of control you have over them is limited-after all, they can't even bend their arms-don't mistake Multiwinia for a simplistic game; at first you'll be running around the map just trying to beat the computer on Easy Mode.
