Multiwinia is a multiplayer version of Introversion’s Darwinia with a twist. They’ve trimmed it down in some areas and padded out in others, turning it into a somewhat different gaming experience.

There isn’t much of a background story to this game, although I didn’t feel it was needed, as the gameplay itself was enough to satisfy the need for a story. The flat life forms have decided that a bit of competitive multiplayer with a high ’flat’ count would be fun so they split themselves into red, blue, green and yellow divisions that would meet in combat to decide which colour would come out victorious. There is no complex narrative, tiny dialogue or slow to scroll through text to get your head around or strain your eyes over. There is a battlefield, your opponent and that’s it!

In Multiwinia you have six different gaming modes: Domination, King of the Hill, Capture the Statue, Rocket Riot, Blitzkrieg and Assault, with different selections of maps enabling up to four differently coloured teams to combat each other against either AI or human opponents. I mainly concentrated on playing either the King of the Hill or Capture the Statue modes.

Multiwinia still retains a lot of the core elements of Darwinia although they have been expanded to suit a multiplayer environment and is, in essence, a conceptually limited strategy game. Now you can promote Darwinians to Officers at will by right clicking your mouse, enabling you to direct your army’s flow from spawn points or to create a basic formation. This makes a big difference in combat, giving you the ability to marshal your Darwinians into a structure. To further aid your assault, you’ve also access to weapon drops  and this is where perhaps the game becomes a little unbalanced.