By default, crates tend to appear closer to the losing teams, and the power they unleash can often turn the tide of battle. There's also a chance that you'll open a bad crate, unleashing a virus outbreak that will infect all of the troops in the vicinity. These include air strikes, meteor showers, armoured carriers, monsters, vicious ant nests, gun turrets, and even mininukes. In addition to sending your units to attack and capture, you can use them to collect crate drops for bonus items.
Usually, a simple instruction is enough to get them back into the action, but sometimes they'll refuse to cooperate, which can be frustrating in the heat of battle. Multiwinians take care of combat automatically, but you occasionally find them floating around by themselves or running away from the frontlines. In addition to directing Multiwinians via proxy through officers, certain levels allow you to teleport them through transmitter dishes or place up to 100 at a time in an armoured carrier to ferry across land and water. One of the criticisms of Darwinina was that the controls took some getting used to, but the new control system eradicates submenus and definitely makes things less frustrating. Two tutorials introduce you to the basic and advanced aspects of gameplay, but it doesn't take long to become a pro. The accessible style is quite refreshing it's nice to not have to worry about complex objectives and be able to launch an attack within seconds of starting your session. There's no resource management or building of bases in Multiwinia-it's all about defending your own structures, capturing new ones, and attacking the opposing forces to increase your rank in the game. These organised squads have stronger firepower than randomly scattered troops, but they're also more vulnerable to attack from the rear. You can use the mouse to control Multiwinians as individuals or as a group, but the easiest way to command them is to create an officer who can then direct them to coordinates or command a formation. As long as you control at least one Multiwinian reproductive centre, you get a steady supply of reinforcements, although you need to be on top of commanding or they'll just mill around your spawn point. In Rocket Riot, you gain points that are solar panels for fuelling your spaceship, and in Assault, you have to defend a weapon of mass destruction. The overall objective in each game mode is to advance ground while controlling various strategic points. There's a decent amount of variety in the six game modes, including the amusing Capture the Statue. Thus, you'll be kept busy for some time with the variety and amount on offer. There are six game modes and 44 maps in total available in single and multiplayer. Effigies include dumbbells, the maoi of Easter Island, a billboard marked "place your ad here," and even the Companion Cube from Portal. Capture the Statue puts a nice spin on the classic Capture the Flag, where your ant-sized minions need to carry a bulky figure back to your base. You control an army of microscopic Multiwinians through a variety of game modes, including Domination, King of the Hill, Capture the Statue, Assault, Rocket Riot, and Blitzkrieg. This means that there are no incentives for playing through the game by yourself, and each map essentially becomes a stand-alone mission.
The story actually isn't that important though-there are no cutscenes or in-game dialogue in the single-player mode-because all of the game's maps and modes are unlocked from the beginning. The populace are left fighting it out and become known as the Multiwinians thereafter. However, when a virus breaks out, the inhabitants of Darwinia became infected, plunging the digital landscape into a battleground for limited resources.
For generations, the Darwinians inhabited their isometric, Tron-like digital world, existing solely on a server hosted by a computer scientist. The story of Multiwinia follows on directly from Darwinia. The game's cute and addictive nature will appeal to newcomers and casual strategy fans alike, although more seasoned strategists may find it too shallow. Like its predecessor, Multiwinia has a retro graphical style and simple game mechanics, but its low-fi environment and accessible gameplay are the key to its appeal. It's a real-time strategy game in which you command armies of flat, 2D characters across a range of isometric environments. Multiwinia is a multiplayer take on indie outfit Introversion's break-out hit Darwinia.