In vista dell'uscita del nuovo titolo Live Arcade Darwinia+, Xbox Community Network ci ha fornito una intervista in inglese a Mark Morris, Managing Director dello sviluppatore del gioco Introversion Software. Ve la proponiamo di seguito, in inglese.

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1.      Tell us a bit about the story behind Darwina+. Does it follow on from Darwina the PC and Mac game released in 2005?

Darwinia+ is a package containing updated versions of both Darwinia and Multiwinia re-envisaged for the Xbox360.  We were confident that our original PC version of Darwinia had a great, rounded story about the Darwinians and Dr Sepulveda and we didn’t want to spoil that by artificially adding on some side-story or extending it unnecessarily.  Instead we concentrated on making the Xbox version as polished and accessible as we possibly could – we have completely re-worked the control system and added new introductory sections to ease players into the game as well as getting the framerate up and reaching for the digital pledge so we could give the graphics a right good polish.  We think of Darwinia+ as the director’s cut of Darwinia and we are very proud of it.

2.      Darwinia+ appears to show influences from a number of iconic eighties video game and movie hits, which of these, if any, are the main inspirations behind the game?

Darwinia had quite a tumultuous start in life.  Originally the game was supposed to be a huge war game where you controlled armies with tens of thousands of soldiers.  Try as we might we just couldn’t get the control mechanic work, but we had invested too much time in the project so we had to keep pushing forward.  One day our creative director (Chris Delay) started messing with the landscapes and we got together and thought “Hey, that looks a bit like Tron”.  That got us thinking about this strange world existing in a computer which in turn gave rise to the idea that the Darwinians were alive and had evolved to such a level that they were worth saving.  Once we had hit on that idea, we just kind of went nuts and started throwing in references to other games and movies from our childhood. Space invaders, centipede, syndicate, lemmings, zarch -  there are nods to all those classics in Darwinia.

3.      From a visual standpoint the game has a lot in common with Zarch/Virus on the Apple Archimedes/Amiga. Does that stretch to the gameplay elements in any way? And were you at all inspired by those long forgotten classics, or are the parallels drawn between the two game's looks, a mere coincidence?

Zarch! that brings back some memories.  When I was at school we had IT classes taught by the head master who didn’t really know enough to be teaching about computers.  I remember finishing the work sheets in the first 5 mins of the lesson and playing Zarch for the rest of it – happy days.  There was actually a fractal image generation program for the Amiga called “Vista”.  Vista was actually the biggest inspiration for the look before it became tron-ified, but looking at some old zarch videos there definitely are some similarities.  From a game-play perspective Darwinia probably borrows most from cannon fodder / syndicate.  The key unit in the game is the death squad that you use to wipe the virus from Darwinia and the control mechanisms and structure of that unit is very similar to cannon fodder.

4.      How flat do you need to be to survive?

Ha! Flatter than me in January that’s for sure.

5.      Do you have any DLC planned?

Not at the moment – it took us around 4 years to create Darwinia+ which was a lot longer than expected. We tried to create a DLC map pack, but to be honest it wasn’t very good and we decided that we didn’t want to release something that wasn’t up to scratch and we just ran out time.  We didn’t want to release worthless DLC, because we’re gamers and we don’t like it when we are expected to pay for something that should really have been free, or when developers salami slice their game in an attempt to rinse a few extra dollars out of the players.  If Darwinia+ takes off then we’ll definitely look into taking the time to release some cool DLC like the map editor or a proper map pack.  That said, we did manage to get some gamer pics in there and also some cool Darwinia+ Avatar awards which hopefully the fans will love.

6.      Will it be possible to play the game in a cooperative way? How many players can join an online battle? Do you support the XBL-Vision camera in online battles like command & conquer?

When we first approached Microsoft with Darwinia they said “it’s great but you need some Multiplayer”.  At first we tried to do just that, create a bit of Multiplayer in the Darwinia world to keep MS happy.  As you would expect with that sort of attitude the results were rubbish and we just couldn’t allow ourselves to release something that wasn’t awesome.  We went back to the drawing board and created a whole new Multiplayer experience that grew and grew until eventually it was big enough for us to launch as a full retail title in it’s own right – Multiwinia.  Realising that we now had two full games we came up with the idea that Darwinia+ was a package containing both Darwinia and Multiwinia. Now there is no multiplayer in the Darwinia campaign, but Multiwinia supports up to four players across Xbox Live.  A number of the four player maps are co-operative so you can play 2 v 2, which is cool.  We didn’t implement the camera, because Multiwinia is very fast paced with tons of stuff going on – it’s a real visual feast and I think that having the camera on screen would detract from that.  It was also the case that we were running out of time and had to draw the line somewhere – if there is lots of call for it then who knows – maybe we’ll do it in a title update.

7.      For those of us completely new to Darwina+, can you explain the core mechanic behind the game?

Way back in the 80s Dr Sepulveda was a crazy entrepreneur who had success with a number of inventions.  Looking for a market to move into he created the protologic 68000 games console which proved to be a total flop.  After not selling a single console, Dr. S. became depressed and retreated to his warehouse with thousands of the unsold consoles.  Quietly, behind locked doors he wired the consoles together and they began to resonate on a quantum level giving Dr S. more computing power than had ever been in the hands of a single man.  He decided to run a massive experiment into digital life and created a digital race – the Darwinians and allowed them to evolve inside the machine.  Now the Darwinians have reached an interesting stage in their development Dr. S has decided to open Darwinia as the world’s first digital theme park.  Catastrophically, on the eve of the launch, Darwinia has become infected with a deadly virus that is wiping out the native Darwinians and without your help, Darwinia is doomed and with it Dr Sepulveda’s life time of work.

You take control of the death squad – Dr Sepulveda’s anti-virus software with attitude – and start destroying the virus with lasers and grenades and rockets.  At the same time you use your engineers to harvest the souls of dead virus and rebirth them as Darwinians.  By turning the virus back into Darwinians you provide a workforce that you can use to reboot Darwinia and across 10 locations you turn on the systems in the world so that once again the Darwinians can continue their peaceful existance.

Thematically, Multiwinia takes place thousands of generations after Darwinia.  The Multiwinians watched how you defeated the virus and have themselves become violent.  Splitting into different tribes they clash over key resources in the world – their peaceful innocence has been lost forever and the stick man slaughter has begun!

8.      The Darwina+ game trailer pays a small homage to the C64 loading screen, can we expect (hopefully) the in-game audio and music to continue in the same vein, perhaps a few 8-bit SID chip tunes?

At the time we wrote Darwinia we felt that the games industry was stagnating and that the creativity had been driven out by the money-men.  Darwinia was our response to that – a kind of retrospective on how good it used to be and how good it could be again.  We wanted to generate the feeling that we had when growing up in the halcyon days of video gaming and we used lots of tricks to evoke that feeling in the players of Darwinia.  In the old spectrum days you used to have to wait for the tape to load your game and you’d get these crazy bootloaders to keep you entertained.  We kept this concept and wrote some for Darwinia.  There’s an old ray tracer in there, a spectrum boot loader tribute and even a nod to the old Amiga pirates who used to tag their cracked games with these crazy looking graphics demos.

We continued the theme with the audio and went as far as to recreate a model of the old POKEY sound chip from the old 8-bit Atari computers to get the feel right.  We enlisted the help of some really talented audio guys and if you love the music you can even buy the soundtrack (plug plug).

9.      This is Introversion Software's first console game, what made you decide to bring it to the Xbox 360 and what new features have you added?

We founded Introversion because we wanted to make original video games.  In the late nineties too many developers were churning out clones and sequels and we really wanted to return to that original and deeply creative spirit that we have grown up with.  With this in mind we had to take big risks with our games – we have no real idea how popular they will be until they are released and one way of mitigating that risk is to make sure that we expose the game to as wide an audience as possible.  This was the thinking behind our desire to get on Xbox LIVE Arcade.  We knew Darwinia was a great game (we’d picked up three of the Independent Game Festival Awards) and our meta-crtitic score was 84.  We wanted to bring Darwinia to that whole new audience of console gamers so they could have as much fun as their PC counterparts had.

Despite the awards we had definitely made mistakes with the first version.  The control system used gestures and we didn’t really take the time to explain this properly to the player it also got annoying when you had been playing the game for a long time.  The game was rushed out and was buggy.  Re-working the game for the 360 gave us the chance to correct all this faults.  We created new tutorials, ironed out all the bugs and really polished the visuals.  Darwinia and Multiwinia also really compliment each other – having the two games in one package really cause both titles to shine.  We’ve also done a great leaderboard integration and this was one of the most asked for features from our Multiwinia PC community.  There was an unofficial board, but you can’t beat having every Multiwinia player ranked.  We really think of this package as the Director’s cut – the best version of Darwinia we have ever made.

10.  What improvements have you made to the tutorial system to gently ease Xbox Live Players into the Darwinia experience?

Darwinia on the PC didn’t have any tutorial – it just dumped you into the world with no explanation.  We created a specifically designed level to communicate the core concepts of the game.  You’re gently introduced to the controls and each of the unit types in the game.  Dr. Sepulveda talks you through everything so you are fully prepared to enter the first level in the campaign.  As Multiwinia is a different game and plays differently, there are also two uniquely designed tutorial levels that introduce you to the core concepts of Multiwinia.  All of these tutorials and some sample levels are in the trial so every new player will enjoy a gentle ramp into the game – this time, we’ll leave no one behind!

11.  Darwinia has a thrilling gameplay. Is this the central element of the experience or does it also offer a storyline?

Thank-you for saying so!  I think a big part of Darwinia’s charm is the story.  Despite being really simple looking, the Darwinians have behaviors that endear them to the players.  When they are happy they dance around the place, when the see a dead Darwinan they gather around in reverence and build kites to help the souls transition to the soul repository in the sky.  Whilst the game-play is action oriented the story is quite spiritual and something of a morality tale – especially when you find out how the virus came into being.

sumptuous visual feast.  This is why the games compliment each other so well, if you need a break from the story, or just aren’t into that sort of thing then you fire up Multiwinia grab yourself a gun turret and mo down thousands of enemy Multiwinians in an explosion of digital arms and legs (it’s also very funny when they are on fire).

12.  Are there any plans to adopt Multiwinia for XBLA, too?

It’s right there in the package – just press right for Darwinia and left for Multiwinia – you’ll see!