Darwinia (2005) Complete Indie Game

In most RTS games, resource-gathering and military power are two mostly separate things. In Darwinia, your resources are actually the souls of dead units and you need to harvest them soon after you kill them.

This choice between harvesting and military is very dynamic. You can and have to change your tactics fast to deal with the situation. You have a low maximum number of units but there is no build time. However, you can only build at certain locations, so waiting time depends on where the battle is taking place.

Third, micro-management is quite different from what you're used to: You don't just click to attack, you decide exactly where your soldiers shoot. Macro-management is really narrative-driven. Levels have very different goals with each other and winning feels more like solving a puzzle than managing and allocating resources.

Darwinia is a weird little game, it's one of those things that broaden your horizons. That's why it shouldn't be missed.

METASCORE 84/100