Multiwinia is a Quick, Lunch-Break Fast Game that has you saying 'One More Game' until you drop.
To describe Multiwinia.. Well, Think the 'Worms' series. Now Bring it into 3D, Rethink the 'Worms' as Divisions of your massive amounts of Forces, and the Crates- Well, Keep the Crates. Multiwinia is a Fast Paced RTS brought down to it's core essentials, no Resource Counters to Keep track of, or Tech Trees to advance, it's just you, your objective, and your enemy in between.
GAMEPLAY
With each game, you either have a Spawn Point (Capturable by the Enemy) or a Trunk Port (Not Capturable), every now and again, these will Spawn anywhere from 10 (Spawns) to 40 (Trunk Ports on Default) Multiwinians, the Backbone, Muscle, and Core of your forces. The Multiwinians will simply roam around until you tell them otherwise. Within a game, thousands of these little guys will spawn, and die in combat. As opposed to it's predecessor, Darwinia, the Multiwinians can be commanded directly By Clicking and Holding the Left Mouse button, a Circle will emanate from your mouse point, expanding and selecting all Multiwinians in the area, then they can be guided to a area of your choice. Emphasis on 'Guided' because aside from telling them the general direction where to head, their Behavior is completely autonomous, they move, they fight, they do most everything on their own, which definitely helps in the control of the Hundreds of Men you will have on the battlefield. Another method of ordering your Multiwinians is by promoting one of them with a right click, this will promote them to officer, where they can do a little more. Officers are capable of either staying put and telling any Multiwinians near them to go to a specific point on the map, or, they can Order their forces into a Formation, which provides a tactical boost in that, Formed Multiwinians are More Powerful against un-organized Multiwinians from the front on, but are slower and can easily be flanked from behind, a Weakness that should be considered if you're surrounded.
Aside from your forces, occasionally large Crates will fall from the sky (Much Like 'Worms) and Land, if you surround your men around a crate, they will gradually open, and secure the crate's contents. The various items inside can either turn the battle toward or against you, such as a Manually placed Gun Turret that is Controlled by the Multiwinians on it, or a pinpointed Airstrike to decimate the enemy numbers. There are also chances of negative contents of a crate, such as a Plague that can spread from Multiwinian to Multiwinian, slowly consuming any closely-packed forces, or Viruses from Darwinia appearing on the spot and decimating your forces.
Six Game Modes exist thus far, Domination is a simple game mode where many Spawn Points are placed on the map, and it is your goal to capture all Points and crush your opposition. King of the Hill is self explanatory, multiple hills are placed on the map, and you receive points for each second you have the majority of forces inside. Capture the statue is like a Game of Capture the flag, but the Statues mentioned are extremely large and heavy, it takes near 50 Multiwinians to lift and carry the statue and return it to base. Assault is a simple asymmetrical mode where an Attacking team is attempting to prevent the Defending team's Bomb from detonating, Attackers Receive wave after wave of reinforcements, while Defenders are Heavily Armed. Rocket Riot is a very Unique game mode to Multiwinia, each team has a Rocket in their starting location, and they must capture solar panels to power fuel generators to refuel the rocket, After the rocket is refueled they must load the Rocket with 100 Multiwinians and Wait 10 seconds for their Rocket to Launch. Finally, Blitzkrieg, much similar to Unreal Tournament 2004's Onslaught mode, requires you to capture and Link flags in a line to the enemy's home base, and successfully capture it.
Multiwinia's games are Fast paced as they typically only last from five to fifteen minutes, easily able to fit within a lunch break. The only true skill required is a Tactical mind, and Luck. Multiwinia, even with it's large scale battles, is designed to run on a Modest system on low graphics settings, and even on low graphics settings, you won't be missing much of the Detail put into the game. Multiplayer battles are very clean and minimal on lag. As far as Lasting fun, Multiwinian gives a good modest while, Introversion will be updating with new features and maps (Perhaps even a Map Editor), and Will definitely be worth the 20$.
There are only occasional problems which prevent me from rating this a 10, Lag does happen sometimes when specific powerups are activated, and you may find it's control system unusual for an RTS (It's more of an FPS Spectator Controlset). But these minor problems do not dampen the gameplay even slightly.
If you're a RTS Fan looking for a 'Different' kind of game, or Simply a Casual Gamer looking to spend a small amount of cash, you should definitely take a look at the Demo offered for this game, as the Demo contains much of the elements of the main game, well, aside from online play.