In The Darwin Project (PC, Xbox One) you fight against nature, your fellow players, and a sadistic game master. This makes the battle royale game similar to the bestseller “The Hunger Games.” We played The Darwin Project during the first beta weekends on Steam.
Are you tired of the same old 100-player battle royale deathmatches like PUBG and would you prefer a game that is more oriented towards “The Hunger Games”? Then The Darwin Project might be for you!
Here, 10 players fight in a cruel experiment, which is partly also a TV show, for survival in the icy wasteland. An 11th player can intervene as a game master at any time for even more action!
I, Jürgen, played The Darwin Project during the first open beta weekend from January 19 to 21. Read here how I fared as the worst hunter in the world and the most trollish game master in the game.
10 instead of 100
The big difference to PUBG becomes apparent right from the start. Instead of 100 or more players, only 10 people are on the move. Additionally, we do not all start from an airplane but begin our survival fight at 10 separate locations on a map. The map consists of 7 hexagonal sub-regions.
There is also no epic slaughter immediately after the game starts. No player is initially within reach of another. Instead, in the first few minutes, it’s all about gearing up for the fight and protecting yourself from the cold.
Battle Royale meets Survival
Your avatar starts only with an axe, a bow with four arrows, and prisoner clothing in the wilderness. There are no other weapons. You have to aim carefully with the bow or brutally smash your fellow players in close combat with the axe. Wild shooting with pistols and rifles, like in Fortnite or PUBG, is not found in The Darwin Project.
Nevertheless, you have a variety of equipment in The Darwin Project. However, you mostly have to craft them yourself. Everywhere in the game world, there are small trees or old sofas. From these, you can obtain wood or leather, and then craft various goodies from them.
Crafting is vital for survival!
Among other things, you can craft the following from sufficient wood and/or leather:
- New arrows (there are also variants like incendiary arrows)
- Campfires to warm up
- Warm clothing against the cold
- Shoes for more speed
- Whetstones for the axe (more damage)
- Armor against attacks
- Traps like bear traps or tripwires
Regularly, stationary electronic storage locations are activated in the game world. This is somewhat like an air drop from PUBG. The first to arrive on site can obtain an electronic component.
From these, high-tech goodies are created, such as a camouflage field, a teleporter, or a protective shield. Such gadgets are particularly useful in the endgame! Therefore, the electronic storage locations are often fiercely contested death zones!
The icy death!
While you fight for survival in the icy world of The Darwin Project, your avatar is freezing. A display indicates how cold you are. Over time, it steadily decreases. If the display reaches zero, you are dead.
To escape the cold death, you must start a fire and thus refill the cold meter. However, the fires are highly visible. They reveal your position to enemies …
You can protect yourself against the cold with (expensively craftable) warm clothing and slow down the decrease of the cold meter, but eventually, you must warm up. Therefore, it does not help to hide somewhere for a long time and camp. The game clearly rewards daring players who actively explore the world.
Hunters …
Another argument against campers is The Darwin Project’s “tracking system.” You always leave your traces in the world that other players can follow. This starts with the visible footprints you create in the snow. In deep snow, real trails are left behind, which even the last idiot can follow in their sleep.
But there are even more usable traces. Every time you harvest a resource, a clue is left behind. If another player finds such a clue, your position and distance are revealed to them for a short time, and you are no longer safe!
In such situations, The Darwin Project has its strongest moments:
- Because when you start to pick up the trail, you feel like an all-powerful hunter stalking your helpless prey: like a wolf chasing a rabbit.
- But if you are the rabbit and not the wolf, you feel like a poor victim being hunted through the woods by an axe-wielding psychopath!
… and the hunted
However, things can quickly turn around when an overly ambitious hunter falls into a trap set by the “prey.” Or you might end up like me, the clumsiest hunter of all time!
There was only one player left besides me, and I was well-equipped and had picked up the trail. But I was so overtaken by the hunting instinct that I had eyes only for the prey and crashed on the way to it, falling into a pit of lava.
The last player, who was crowned the winner without any effort, laughed heartily via voice chat.
The game master – May the games begin!
Through the successful mix of survival, hunting simulator, and shooter, The Darwin Project is already pleasantly different from the battle royale competition. But there is also a new feature: the game master (GM)! This eleventh player does not run through the bush like the others, trying to survive.
Instead, this player is a camera drone, which as the game master can intervene in the gameplay at any time. However, the game master is also subject to rules. You have a total of 11 actions that you can use only once each.
An arsenal of goodies and nastiness
You can, among other things:
- Heal players
- Warm players
- Seal an area of the map (players freeze faster as long as they are inside)
- Drop an atomic bomb on an area, instantly killing everyone within after 40 seconds
- Activate an additional electronic storage
- Reduce gravity in an area
- Make a player temporarily invulnerable
- Make a player visible to all other players for a certain time. If he survives, he even gets bonuses!
However, the game master cannot execute all of this immediately or at their whim. Instead, you as the GM must first gain action points. You get one every minute. Simple actions cost 2 to 3 points, but if you want to drop the bomb or declare a large hunt, you must first save up 5 points. Therefore, such extreme actions are common only later in the game.
Also funny: Thanks to voice chat, game masters and players can always communicate. And since the GM sees everything, they can give targeted tips. Or mislead players!
A feast for socializers or trolls!
In fact, the game master is the ideal position for helpful philanthropists or mean trolls. A kind GM can make sure that a player about to freeze doesn’t meet an inglorious end. Or heal an injured player again. Of course, a nice GM doesn’t drop bombs or calls for a manhunt.
It looks completely different when a troll is at the wheel. They lure players into doom or ensure that an area gets bombed and the subsequent escape routes are shortly blocked. Then the wildly fleeing players may freeze to death in the blocked zone, and the troll laughs maliciously!
I pulled a particularly nasty action as a GM: I made a well-equipped player the target of the large manhunt. All players rushed to him and wanted to slaughter him. But as soon as they reached him, I briefly made the “victim” invulnerable, healed it to the maximum, and gave it a speed boost. It followed with an epic slaughter of the confident hunters!
Jürgen’s conclusion – A great idea, but will it succeed?
I fell in love with The Darwin Project shortly after starting it. The game already makes a good impression in open beta and runs smoothly. The mixture of survival and battle royale works wonderfully, and the tension when you have just picked up the trail of your victim or are becoming prey is indescribable!
Additionally, the fun game master mode allows for plenty of freedom. I can imagine that this feature can be used quite excitingly through Twitch and at special events. Possibly with the audience voting on what the GM should do.
Does it all work as planned?
However, during the beta, I also experienced players and game masters insulting each other in the most obscene ways nonstop. Therefore, most players are likely to turn off the voice chat soon.
Furthermore, I find it a bit disappointing that there are only bows and axes in the game. This doesn’t create much of a shooter feel, but with rifles and grenades, the survival part would probably be lacking. Perhaps the developers will later incorporate special weapons with very limited ammunition.
The Darwin Project is just one of several upcoming battle royale games in 2018.
