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Darwin Project

Darwin Project - Beta Impressions

Is this the next step in the evolution of the battle royale genre?

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The eponymous Darwin Project puts ten jumpsuit-wearing prisoners together in an icy environment and has them fight to the death in a Battle Royale experience that follows in the footsteps of PUBG and its growing collection of peers. However, Scavengers Studio hasn't followed the script as closely as other games have in recent months, and the results are surprisingly refreshing, even if the experience as a whole is proving a little divisive. More on that later.

Darwin Project takes the basic last man standing premise and mixes things up with a couple of ideas that we've not seen in this growing sub-genre before. Most immediately obvious is the focus on crafting. As the player explores their surroundings they'll find a limited number of resources - trees, abandoned furniture, that sort of thing - that must be gathered and used in crafting. The icy environment means that your character's body temp will drop steadily throughout, and building fires is an important part of keeping the cold at bay. You can also craft a number of additional items, for example, the first thing we would do is get the materials to build a snuggly winter coat, thus keeping us warmer for longer.

The more you gather and craft, the more advantages you'll have later in the game, and this ends up making Darwin Project feel a little bit like a MOBA as each new game has defined character progression. This is reinforced by the lower player count; you're not given a throwaway character, rather you have to nurture them and grow in strength as you play, crafting upgrades to weapons and armour as you progress. Players are dropped into an area by themselves at the start of the game and are free to take their time at first, finding resources and exploring their immediate area. It won't take long before you bump into someone else though, and when that happens things quickly get violent.

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The combat isn't the most nuanced or complicated, especially when compared to the competition, although perhaps we should add the caveat that we only played with one character. We were able to choose between two bows and two melee weapons, but that was the extent of it from our experience. The combat is as simplistic as the weapon options, but given the complexity elsewhere we're not sure that's a bad thing. You can swing your weapon (in our case we mainly went with the axe over the shovel) in a wide arc, smashing anyone that gets in your way. Likewise, if you've got arrows you can fire them at your opponent, and if you score a hit either up close or at range, your opponent will be knocked back and away from you, making it hard to get a succession of quick hits in at best, or letting your opponent escape at worst. It's an interesting design choice, and it feels very arcadey, but we thought it worked. Whether using the bow or something more up close and personal, the action felt fast and fluid.

While the combat may be straightforward, the evolution of each match is most certainly not, and this is because of Darwin Project's innovative and divisive key feature, the show director. While there might be ten players freezing out in the snow, fighting for survival, there's actually an eleventh player who assumes the role of director and, from their omnipotent position in the clouds, directs the action in a number of ways. If you've seen West World or The Truman Show, you'll understand the concept of someone overseeing the action, tinkering with events to create a more entertaining narrative, but as with so much in life, with great power comes great responsibility.

We saw the good and bad side of the feature. On one occasion, for example, we were sneaking up on another player who was warming their hands at a fire, when the director told him we were coming and he took off into the woods. Very frustrating. On the other hand, however, we played as the director and had a great time. We took the role seriously and tried to keep the game balanced and engaging for those taking part, and we were given a number of tools to help us achieve this. That said, we can see why some people aren't enamoured with the design choice and are calling for it to be removed or for there to be a mode without a player-controlled director, because it's easy to abuse the considerable power you're given in the game, should you so wish.

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We opted for balance and equality, favouring no particular player, and trying to push them together and create moments of action. You can shut down different areas so players have to move on, and you can subtly funnel them towards each other if you're careful and time it right. There are other, more aggressive ways you can shake things up, and we even managed to end one player's game by dropping a nuke on the sector they were investigating (they had plenty of time to get out, they just tried to cut down one too many trees on their way out). Other tricks include giving players temporary speed and health boosts, and even invincibility. Clearly a director has the ability to unbalance a match, but careful consideration and clever use of the abilities you have (there are a limited number of action points available at any one time, so you can't make everyone Speedy Gonzales, for example) can empower players to take risks they might otherwise not have contemplated, driving them into an area where other players are exploring.

One interesting design choice was the decision to have open comms as standard, and we'd been chatting away to someone while playing without realising our conversation was being broadcast until we were sat in the next lobby waiting to start and another player told us to shut up. Fair enough, we were chatting a load of nonsense, but the open comms was still the only thing we didn't really like. For the director it opens up too many opportunities for unhelpful meddling, and we'd prefer that all players were anonymous to everyone else involved, ensuring that the key directorial role was dispassionately executed. Calls for a mode without are worth considering, but actually we rather enjoyed this aspect and want to see it evolved and refined, rather than left on the cutting room floor. We also look forward to playing in a pair, another mode that wasn't available during the beta. Still, Darwin Project certainly caught our attention thanks to some innovative ideas stitched into what is becoming an increasingly well-worn concept. There's plenty for the devs to think about as they move closer to full release on PC and Xbox One, but we enjoyed our brief introduction and look forward to playing more when the time comes.

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