PC Review: Multiwinia: Survival of the Flattest

Introversion Software is the creator of Darwinia and Defcon, now moves into the arena of the flattest. This is no huge RTS game where you spend hours creating your countries, building technologies, increasing strengths of your civilization only to have a hostile neighbor come along and destroy it in a matter of minutes.

No, Multiwinia: Survival of the Flattest jumps right into the action of several single and multiplayer games. And for this reason, this makes a decent entry level game into the RTS genre for many. It’s also interesting that Introversion took the face out of war. The characters are not units of small humans dying in masses of blood and gore. No, these little colorful Multiwinia simply turn into flat little charcoal briquettes.

It is for this reason and a few others that we found Multiwinia: Survival of the Flattest more of a simple game to easily pick up and put back down again without any drive to play it over and over again. Many RTS fans might also find it too shallow for their taste as does leave out the creation of the world, and the armies that those worlds might create.

That’s not to say that there’s not any fun in Multiwinia. On the contrary, for those who do enjoy a faster deployment strategy to their RTS, this is a game that will easily fill that bill.

There are several game modes to choose from. The single player mode allows games such as a simple Domination where you basically simply take over the map to win, King of the Hill, (ah the memories of childhood), where you hold zones on the map to score points, Capture the Statute where you send your troops to carry a heavy statue back to your base while the enemy are trying to stop that and do the same. Then getting into the more interesting of the games, you have Assault where you have to assault a heavily defended enemy position in order to capture their WMD before it goes BOOM.

Rocket Riot is another fun single player game where the first one to launch their rocket wins, but again, the enemy is also trying to sabotage your efforts. Then Blitzkrieg is the well-loved game of capture the flag. These can be fun with multiple enemies trying to deter your efforts to win.

Adding to the unpredictability of the game’s result are crates that continuously fall from the sky. These can be some very interesting weapons to help you achieve victory so it’s best to watch for them and use them when possible. It could be a bomb or flame thrower, or it could turn out to be a space ship that picks up and revives your dead only to deposit the whole battalion right in the middle of a major battle, easily turning the tide of that battle. My favorite were the bugs and creatures that would attack and devour you’re your enemy on site.

But even more fun are when you take an unpredictable human brain as an opponent and play these same games. While the AI of the single player game is good, the best fun in Multiwinia is where you play against others. Human enemies are more difficult to predict and gives the game a greater challenge and maybe a bit more replay ability.

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For the most part, Multiwinia: Survival of the Flattest is no graphic masterpiece. The focus of the game is to give the player some simple fun where you are thrown right into the heat of battle without the tediousness of managing any other resources other than your little flat guys. It further adds some more interesting aspects of the battles like the crates that can easily turn the tide if used correctly. And the game is more designed with the younger more beginner RTS gamer in mind, though I also found several of our staff of very experienced RTS gamers enjoy many aspects of the game. Though for the most avid of RTS gamers, they became bored with Multiwinia a little more quickly.

Multiwinia: Survival of the Flattest is a fun game with some interesting aspects, but no masterpiece by a long shot. There will be many who will enjoy many hours of pleasure playing against friends, but like most games, this one is not for everyone. Give it a look with an open mind and you may just find a game that could catch your imagination without the need for the bloody conflicts.

Overall Score: 7.4 (out of 10)

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