After the second of two marathon sessions this last weekend, I finished the game Darwinia by Ambrosia Software. This is one of the most unique and addictive games I’ve ever played. I’m not quite sure how to describe it. Think of Tron, Sim City, and Risk, and you still won’t quite have it.

Running this on my iMac 20" G5 with full resolution was like being there. Think of the time you might spend poring over an elaborate train set or a huge aquarium. To say it’s immersive is an understatement. After several hours of playing I come away feeling that I’ve spent time in a real place.

I’ve known about this game for several months. I read Ambrosia’s news release about it, and then a friend tried to explain it to me. I still didn’t understand quite what I was hearing. The trouble with completely new experiences is that nobody can completely prepare you for them.

Darwinia has a single story arc, but is not like traditional interactive fiction. There are a set of objectives you have to complete, but the way you complete them has nothing to do with “put this key into this lock”. Instead, they are like objectives in war, and you get to decide how to complete them using what you have at your disposal.

It is a simulation: the world has certain rules, which it follows at a very fine level of detail, and your gradual understanding of those rules and how to exploit them to achieve the objectives is what drives the game. This leads to a certain odd emergent sense of story. The Darwinians need leadership, and to the degree that you direct them skillfully, they fail or succeed and you share in that. Moreover, you never “save” a game, but simply leave it and return to it, finding it in the same state. Put all of this together and you have a game that feels like it’s, well, alive.