Rage temporarily triples the firing rate and damage of a selected group of soldiers (easily a tide-turner in a pitched battle), while gun turrets deny territory to the enemy. Crates contain a variety of special attacks or units. The main wild cards in a typical Multiwinia match are the periodic crate drops, which are scattered randomly across the battlefield.
Other than Multiwinia‘s use of formations and officers, there is no unit differentiation, alternative weaponry or upgrade system of any sort.
Ranked Multiwinians have greater range and are more effective at rushing turrets, but they’re also more vulnerable to area attacks such as grenades. You can also use officers to organize groups of Multiwinians into rudimentary ranks not unlike the musket brigades of colonial-era armies. Placing officers near spawn points helps muster the reinforcements critical to forming suitably overwhelming mobs.
Officers direct nearby Multiwinians to these designated locations. Right-clicking a Multiwinian promotes it, essentially converting it from citizen into waypoint.
The Multiwinians as they are now called have separated into different colored tribes and set about ethnically cleansing their rivals in an unending war.Īs in Darwinia, Multiwinia‘s gameplay revolves around the use of “officer” units. Where Darwinia has players rescuing tiny sentient programs – the titular Darwinians – from a marauding computer virus in an environment not unlike that of Tron, Multiwinia depicts the next unfortunate step in the Darwinians’ evolution – war. Its multiplayer adaptation Multiwinia: Survival of the Flattest is similarly modest, yet provides as idiosyncratic a real-time strategy experience as its big brother. Developed by Introversion Software, the original Darwinia impressed upon the gaming world the idea that a game could look great and deliver unique gameplay without requiring a million-dollar production budget – Darwinia took up less space than a music file in some higher-profile titles.