Darwin Project
PC, PS4, Xbox One
In a different universe, Darwin Project could have been the wellspring for an entirely new subgenre
Developer/publisher Scavengers Studio
Format PC (tested), PS4, Xbox One
Release Out now
Where does the battle royale go from here? In less than three years, we’ve had three titans establish themselves as the boundaries of the genre. Right now, it seems unlikely anything will dethrone the current holy trinity, excepting another Apex- style surprise, but while those games are constantly iterating, there must be room for something a little more transformative. Darwin Project doesn’t uproot the genre, but playing it is like watching someone reimagine the battle-royale template from first principles.
Part of this is a result of the game’s history. It first launched into early access at the start of 2018, with a plan to release fully that same summer – a period that turned out to coincide almost exactly with the rise of Fortnite mania. Darwin Project retreated, dropping its price of entry for a free-to-play model after a few weeks, and it’s remained a work-in-progress ever since. Here at its eventual release, the crisp snow of its arena remains relatively untouched by the footprints of the competition. This is a battle-royale game without guns, with far fewer than 100 players, and with no need ever to pose that epoch-making question, ‘Where we dropping, boys?’ And, blessedly, it works.
You’re dropped into the Canadian Rockies, one of ten competitors, each armed with an axe (or whatever cosmetic-skinned equivalent you wish to purchase) and a bow. These will be your weapons for the duration, but there’s still that initial rush for equipment, because you need to craft arrows, traps and a campfire if you’re going to last more than a couple of minutes. That means collecting resources by chopping down trees and smashing containers of Darwinium, the game’s magical substance of choice. In these opening moments, Darwin Project might more closely resemble a survival game, in the vein of Rust or Minecraft (hence the name, we suppose) but it’s a hugely simplified version, condensing the experience into ten-minute rounds. Which is pretty much exactly the same evolutionary tide pools out of which the battle royale – or at least precursors such as Minecraft and DayZ’s Survival Games mods – crawled.
In many ways, Darwin Project feels like it’s looking back at the genre’s cinematic inspirations, 2000’s Battle Royale and 2012’s The Hunger Games, and adapting their ideas from scratch. In place of the ever-shrinking circle, the map up is broken into seven sectors, which are turned off one by one. Tracking is a much bigger part of the game – every step leaves marks in the snow, while harvested tree stumps and crafting debris can be studied to reveal the current location of the player who left them. Imagine a game of Apex Legends where every person is playing as Bloodhound. Together, these two elements create moments of real tension, as you cross the border from a closing sector to safety, then spot a trail of footprints circling back round behind you, and get hit with a ‘you are being tracked’ warning message.
It certainly beats finding out someone’s spotted you from the sniper round going through your skull.
As you amass Darwinium, the game evolves. There are three classes to choose from, which currently have the catchy names Jet Wings, Grapple Gauntlet and Headhunter Drone, each with a unique starting ability and their own bonsai tech tree of Darwinium-powered upgrades and special moves. So maybe you’ll begin with a jetpack, then spend resources to make aerial attacks more powerful and unlock an ability that launches your character directly up into the sky – handy for escaping combat, or for getting a quick read on your surroundings. Or you could opt for the drone, as we’re partial to doing, and be rewarded with a robotic eagle companion who can do all the hard work of harvesting and tracking for you, and then buy abilities that make it easier and more effective to track your fellow players. (The Bloodhound comparison raises its head once more – Darwin Project is perhaps not completely innocent of what’s happening in the wider world of battle-royale games.)
Combat, when it eventually comes, is a pleasantly messy affair: two players circling one another, testing the space with axe swings, rolling and ducking, loosing the occasional arrow. There are a couple of nice touches, such as the ability to grab an arrow that missed and fire it back at your opponent, or the way two perfectly timed axe blows will clang off of one another, sending both players tumbling backwards in a moment of beautifully ludicrous cartoon physics. Fights can take a couple of minutes to resolve, or simply be scarpered from – it’s pretty easy to escape a pursuer armed with a bow, especially when you’ve got a grappling hook or mechanical wings strapped to your back.
If this sounds like a stripped-back battle-royale experience, it’s only because we’ve been saving Darwin Project’s biggest idea for last. Ten people are dropped into the Rockies, yes, but the maximum player count is actually 11. That extra person can step into the role of Director, able to cut between players’ feeds and a roaming camera. They can make the occasional verbal broadcast and even guide the course of the game by choosing which sectors to shut off or make more appealing with a Darwinium drop. Or, once per match, just straight-up nuke one out of existence. It is a dangerous tool to put in the hands of the Internet, but comes with a certain sense of responsibility – especially when you see you’ve got a few spectators in tow – that should hopefully help curb people’s urge to troll.
In a different universe, one where it arrived a few months earlier, Darwin Project could have been the wellspring for an entirely new subgenre. Here in reality, the game’s fate remains to be seen – but whatever happens, this is a fresh take on the battle royale that deserves to be experienced.