You may or may not be aware of this, but we have just released a brand new demo of our second game 'Darwinia'. We're aware that you've probably all played the original demo, and we know (from our sales figures) that a very large number of you didn't feel sufficiently moved to buy Darwinia. Which is fair enough - Darwinia and Uplink are very different games, and there's no particular reason why an Uplink fan should like Darwinia. But in the interests of business, please excuse us this one little advert.
We've come to realise since Darwinia's launch that our original demo did a terrible job of introducing the game to new players. We often left them confused, annoyed, or just plain bored. It certainly didn't represent the quality of the full game. We thought long and hard about it, and we've made a lot of improvements and changes, and overall we're confident you will have a much better time with this new demo than you did with the original.
Some screenshots taken directly from the new demo:
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We've totally revamped the control mechanism - one of most commonly mentioned dislikes of Darwinia. The gesture system is gone, replaced with a much more conventional icon-based system. No more drawing triangles on screen to summon a Squad - now you just click the Squad icon, or press they keyboard shortcut F1. We've also removed things like the alt-tab to switch tasks (now you click the icons), and the ctrl-c to terminate tasks (now you click the terminate icon). It's much easier to learn, and much less in your face. We've patched the full game to include this new control mechanism, and the old gestures system is still available for those who want it.
The new demo also contains an entirely new level which we've created from scratch, solely for the purpose of introducing players to the world of Darwinia. There is an extensive tutorial system that runs right through the demo, and there's an introductory sequence that explains what Darwinia is all about. The original demo failed to give clear goals and provided very little help to new players - so if you left Darwinia feeling like you had no idea what you were supposed to be doing, hopefully the new demo will answer your questions.
So, to all you Uplink fans who weren't that impressed with Darwinia - please give it another shot, and try our new demo.
Download here.
Chris, Mark and Tom
Introversion Software
