Darwin Project (PS4) Review

Darwin Project is a Battle Royale game that, after 2 Years in Early Access, got released as a full game in January 2020. It was previously only available on PC via Steam and on Xbox One, but can now also be played on PS4. From January till June 2018 the game was a 15 Dollar/Euro Buy to Play game that afterwards transitioned to an F2P model. The developer of Darwin Project is Scavengers Studio, a small Canadian company, that primarily focuses on this game.

It is important to state, that Darwin Project is not a typical Battle Royale game, since it also has many elements of survival games. I would describe it as an Hybrid of both genres. Nonetheless, it also plays quite arcade-like and the game it reminds me the most of is probably 'The Culling'. 

The visual presentation of the game is rather cartoonish, similar to games like Fortnite, Realm Royale or Creative Destruction. Darwin Project visually differentiates itself by implementing a very atmospheric winter scenario with lots of ice and snow. I do like the gamestyle, but it could scare off people looking for a more realistic BR/Survival game, both visually and gameplay wise. Additionally I also recognized some blurred textures and occasional flickering in the PS4 version. This however is rather rare and was seen even less after the last big patch in late February.

The combat in Darwin Project is mainly fought with a melee axe. Players have to find the right distance and dodge incoming attacks to land 4-5 successful blows in order to eliminate an opponent. Timing is everything in these encounters and button smashing will rarely lead to a favorable result. If two players hit each other at the same moment, the axes will cross and both players will fly backwards. Players can also hit after a roll, which will take away of an endurance bar. This is however not a real stamina bar, since it only plays a role after a dodge roll. Alternatively players can also use a Bow to damage opponents from a distance. Arrows are limited to a maximum of 8 and can either be dodged or blocked with a well timed axe swing. 

I do like the combat system in Darwin Project a lot. The options are simple and easy to understand, but obviously require some time to get really good at. Whether you like the simplicity of combat will be a determining factor in the individual fun, the game can provide. The class differences spike things up, but Darwin Project does not have different attack angles, stamina bars for attacks(at least not anymore) or other aspects like this. Health can be restored by either eliminating an opponent, hunting a deer or injecting a health item. 

Crafting is a central component of every match. Players can accumulate resources by attacking either trees or Darwinium components. Darwinium can also be found, when drones drop larger amounts of darwinium at drop points. These shipments at the drop points store 150 Darwinium in comparison to the regular Darwinium components, that only consist of 15. With the wood gathered from the trees, the users can create arrows, a shield, that protects players from damage due to a successful hit, or a fire-place. The fire-places are very important since players constantly get colder during the match and have to prevent freezing to death. (If the Ice-meter drops to zero the players die very quickly) The Darwinium can be used to improve the characteristics of the class specific gadgets and to construct special abilities. Killed players also drop Darwinium Resources and Woods. Therefore playing very offensive can also be a way to gather resources.

There are 3 classes in total. Each class has a special gadget and three different perks that can receive up to 3 upgrades. Furthermore, players can select 2 of 4 different abilities for the next match with their class. The first 2 abilities of every class are enabled at the start, the third unlocks at level 3 and the last unlocks at level 10.

The first class uses a Jetpack, that strongly increases their mobility. Jetpack players can easily reach higher places, quickly travel across the world or use it to position themselves better within the fights. Jetpack players have perks to at maximum reduce their gasoline consumption 75%, expand their flying speed 60%  and to increase the damage of arrow attacks while using the Jetpack around 75 points. The selectable abilities of the Jetpack class are Meteor, Blast Off, Turret and the Ice Bolt. Meteor is a stomp attack, that allows Jetpack players to hit other players from above. Blast Off is a fast vertical jetpack move comparable to an ejection seat, that allows players to quickly flee from an area or combat. The Turret is a placeable gatling-turret, that will automatically aim at other players and try to shoot them. Ice Bolt is an ability, that temporarily freezes another player and stuns him in that position for a few seconds. 

The second class is the Grapple Gauntlet. Players can use the grapple in a similar way to Apex's Pathfinder, to pull themselves towards an object or to push other players towards them. By default, the grapple can be used once and it has a cooldown of 20 seconds. The perks of the Grapple class are to increase the amount of grapples to 4, to reduce the grapple cooldown to 5 seconds and to increase the damage of axe attacks to a maximum of 225. Grapple players can choose between the abilities Barrier, Lockdown, Turret and Ice Bolt. Barrier creates an indestructible ball around the player for a short period time. The player can neither hit nor be hit during that time. It is mostly used to position the character better for the next axe hit or to avoid damages by arrows. Lockdown on the other hand creates a giant dome, which locks everybody in the surrounding area into the dome for 20 seconds. It is useful to prevent enemy players from fleeing. Players however can free themselves early by hitting the dome multiple times. Turret and Icebolt are identical to the selfsame abilities of the Jetpack class.

The last class is the one with a Headhunter Drone. The drone is automatically flying around the players head and can be used to either order it to remove resources in proximity and distance, or to scan enemies or clues on objects. The other classes focus primarily on movement, while Drone players concentrate on quickly gathering more resources to earn upgrades faster. Drone players are more specialized in long distance combat in comparison to the other two. The Drone class has perks to at maximum increase the movement speed of the player during the scan-duration 15%, to increase the scan-duration 15 seconds and to increase the damage of arrow attacks to a maximum of 225. The abilities of the Drone class are Radar, Invisibility, Turret and Shrink. Radar performs a Scan of the surrounding area that shows the player the location of items, clues or enemy players in this area. Invisibility allows the player to turn invisible for a few seconds to sneak up on enemies or to escape from combat. Turret works identical to the ability for the other two classes. Shrink allows Drone players to shrink significantly in size, which makes them way harder to hit, but they also do noticeably less damage during that time. 

Wood can aside of arrows, a fire-place or a shied also be used to produce different traps. There are 5 different trap types in total. The Bear Trap stuns and injures players, that walk into it. The Pulse Mine release a shockwave, when players move past it. The Smoke Bomb releases a cloud of smoke, that is impossible to see through and all active scans are being canceled. (The smoke bomb actually looks like a Winterstorm) The Cage Trap triggers a small wooden cage around the trapped player, so that other players can either shoot them with an arrow, deploy a turret or hit them, if they come to close to the fences of the cage. The Tripwire makes players trip and automatically activates a scan upon them. Traps can aside from being drafted also be found in chests or when killing deer or other players.

Snowballs, which are projectiles that significantly reduce enemy players ice-meter upon contact, can be produced without the use of any resources. (Which makes sense since 95% of the map consists of snow) They are thrown in a similar way, to how arrows are being shot with a bow.  

Additionally players can also equip up to four different items at the same time. Aside from the traps there are also Health potions, that refill 100 health of the players life-meter. A cup of coffee that reduces the cold and fills up the ice-meter, like the fireplace does. Speed Potions temporarily increase the movement speed of the character for a few seconds, which can help in combat or as an escape way. Furthermore, gliders can be used to quickly fly/glide towards a different area. This especially useful, if players want to escape a nuke, a closing zone or flee from combat. 

The map of Darwin Project consist of 9 randomly chosen zones/tiles in every match. There are more than 9 different tiles and because of the randomness every match feels a bit different. However players will get more familiar with the different zones after a couple of hours and recognize places like the church village, the lava mountain or the giant ice lake. This approach of the developers to create refreshing randomness mixed with familiarity is a unique way of designing a map and I approve of their decision. 

Every match starts with 9 open zones, in which the players spawn randomly. Sometimes you will be the only player in your zone, other times their will spawn two other players in the same area as well. The zones soon begin to lock up till all surviving players have to get into the last active zone. Every zone has a 55 seconds lockdown time, during which the players can attempt to escape the area. They will not receive any penalty for being in the zone during the lockdown time, but their vision is going to be blurred until they leave the zone. In a closed zone the blur effect is also present, but players will additionally freeze in this area extremely fast. Surviving outside of the active zones is in Darwin Project more difficult than in most other BR-games. If there is only one active zone left in the game, but multiple players are still alive, a Sudden Death sequence will begin. The remaining zone will constantly shrink till only a small circle of a few meters is left. This final circle will continuously move around till only one player is left victorious. 

All tiles of the game consist of various Cabins. These can provide some cover for tough fights (they can also turn into instant death traps, if a players gets cornered in a cabin), they often host a Darwinium component or a chest (Chests contain traps, potions or other items) and most of them feature a radar, that gives away the position of all remaining players. Therefore visiting cabins can be a important tactical option, to avoid confrontations or to choose the next hunting target. 

The UI of Darwin Project is in my opinion extremely well designed. All the necessary and additional information are available on screen without the need to open a menu first to check them out, but the UI still doesn't take too much space on screen and the arrangement of elements absolutely makes sense. Other developers can take this as an example. 

Currently, games can only be played in Solo-Mode or as a Director. A duo mode is supposed to be added in the future, but players with a team-focus might currently get disappointed by the lack of options. There are 10 fighting participants in every match, which is a lot less than in nearly all other BR-games. Even games like 'The Culling' or Warface usually feature around 20 players. This is both an advantage as well as an disadvantage in Darwin Project. The survival aspect is clearly more important in Darwin Project than in most of its competitors and fights with other players remain thrilling, since there usually don't happen all that many within one match. Players looking for constant action might feel a little disappointed, since the collecting of resources and tactics in the fights take a prominent position within the gameplay. This collecting of resources and gameplay outside of combat in general can feel a bit monotonous after a couple of hours of gameplay, but this fortunately gets lessened by the map randomization. I would nonetheless identify it as one of Darwin Projects possible weak spots.  

There are ingame lobbies during the matchmaking, where waiting players can battle around without consequences and engage in voice chat. I always like when games offer something like this. It makes the queue-time way more entertaining than just staring at a stats screen. New players can also get more familiar with the combat through encounters in these prematch lobbies. Alternatively Darwin Project also provides a short tutorial, that teaches all the necessary basics, and Bot matches for solo players. Aside from the official multiplayer servers, players can also engage in custom games, where they can determine the rules and restrictions of the match or simply play with their friends. 

Very interesting and quite unique is the role of the 'eleventh player' called 'The Director'. He is flying around with a camera drone and can interact with players by either talking to them or rewarding/punishing them by using one of his 11 actions per match. The director has to choose them before the match and he unlocks more as he keeps leveling up, similar to the player classes. The more harmless abilities are, to reward players with a small amount of wood or health, to send out darwinium drones to drop points, or to close/reopen map zones. Experienced directors are also capable of launching nukes in one of the zones or to put a bounty upon one players head, which makes them an easy target for the others. Other actions allow the Director to shortly reveal the position of all participating players to each other, or to remove jumping physics for 30 seconds etc. Directors, who are streamers, can also link Darwin Project to their Twitch/Mixer/etc. account and let their viewers vote which abilities they should use and who they should target. I appreciate the Director-Mode since it brings a new perspective to the game and the interactions between players and the 'Referee' can be quite interesting and entertaining. However the director position also has the potential to be abused in order to systematically harm or favour particular players. In my experience I only very rarely saw this happen, but it seems worth noting. 

There are a lot of skins in the game, that can be bought with the ingame currency called Ramen (Yes, like the noodles). The skins have varying degrees of rarity and luckily ingame currency can be accumulated by completing daily challenges. Players can stack up to three daily quests, and they mostly contain tasks like killing players with a certain class, collecting resources or playing a certain amount of matches. Most challenges reward 10 Ramen, while the rarer ones can also gift 15 to 20 Ramen. There are no purchasable items in the game, aside from the skins. Every body part like Hats, Shirts, Pants, Boots, Shoulder Plates, Cloaks and Weapons like Axe and Bow can also be customized. (Haircut, Skin colour and Face Details can be changed as well) Getting a full outfit of rarer skins is going to require a lot of playing, if you don't want to purchase the currency, but this system totally seems fair and the devs have to somehow finance the F2P game. It is just a little disappointing that a lot of the skins have to be collected twice, if you want to use them at a male and a female character. On the bright side more common skins also unlock every time the user levels up one of his classes. (The more common skins also don't require much Ramen and should unlock relatively fast through levelling.)  

A couple of noticeable changes happened, when the Darwin Project accomplished a full release. The early access version of Darwin Project for example had a stamina system for running, jumping and performing attacks. This got nearly completely removed and only rolling requires stamina now. There were no real classes in the Early Access version and players could instead design their own playstyle by freely choosing 3 out of 8 abilities. Leather was a third resource for crafting. There were also 4 different boot types, 5 cloak types, 4 types of arrows and 3 types of axes. Speed Boots increased characters movement speed the most. Evader Boots made players faster who got tracked. Hunter Boots gave players an advantage, that inspected clues of enemy players and Ninja Boots decreased the footstep noises of their users. Cloaks weren't just a cosmetic and instead influenced the players abilities. A Fur Cloak extended the freezing time of players. The Detective Cloak supported tracking players with additional time. The Ghost Cloak made it more difficult to be tracked. The Runner Cloak increased the players stamina volume and a Revenge Cloak enabled users to automatically track players who recently attacked them. The different arrow types also had varied effects. Players with standard arrows were able to start matches with 5 of them already equipped. Hunter arrows tracked shot players for 5 seconds. Fire arrows did increased damage, but had a smaller radius of fire and Berserk Arrows enabled their users to use stamina without limitation for 10 seconds after a successful shot. Standard axes also did 150 damage in this version of the game, but players with the specialization of Axe Sharpener could increase the damage till 275. Players with Lumberjack decreased their harvesting time by up to 50% and the general harvesting of a tree took way more time in the early access version. (In the full release it is only one hit) Players with a Scavenger Axe decreased their time to craft items/weapons by up to 50% and could regain life after looting dead players or animals. (In the Early Access version only Scavenger Axe players could do this) Overall the developers changed the foundation of the game quite a lot, which didn't please all Darwin players.   

The developers have currently released a 2020 roadmap to show the future of Darwin Project. The game is going to get three different Battle Passes during 2020. The Season 1 Battle Pass is going to release in late February and the other two are being planned for the Summer and Fall. The popular duo-mode from the previous early access version of the game is going to be reimplemented to the game. In Spring and Fall players can also expect to receive a new fourth and fifth class to the game. In Summer the player statistics are also going to return via a new career profile in the game.

UPDATE: Meanwhile the new Season 1 Battle Pass 'Game Changers' released (because I took too much time to write this review), but I will be giving this a closer look at the end of the season in late April. At that time the new duo mode as well as a new class will also have been released. I will only put on record, that the latest update also changed the class balance by removing the powerful turret ability of the headhunter class and replacing it with a teleport ability. Teleport is useful ability, but in comparison to the Jetwing and Grapple classes, the drone class seems slightly nerfed. This change however requires closer inspection and will be covered soon.

Pro:

-Successful combination of small scale BR and Survival game

-Winter scenario

-Melee combat is exciting

-'Randomized' map keeps the game fresh

-Classes are diverse and relatively balanced

-Director-Mode brings a new perspective

-Great UI Design

-Promising updates for the future

Contra:

-Director could unbalance the matches

-More simplistic/casual than the Early Access version

-Currently only Solo-Mode

-Outside of combat the game can get monotonous

Result:

Darwin Project is an interesting approach to the BR-genre, that mixes BR-competition and survival elements. Fights are always thrilling, because of the simple, but well functioning combat system and the winter scenario suits the game well and intensifies the atmosphere of the game world. In comparison to the Early Access version, the game is now a bit more casual and attracts a brighter audience. I understand the change and believe the game is currently mostly on the right track. The biggest risk could be that too much monotony in between the fights could harm the game in the long term. (However every game can get a bit stale after playing it for a very long time)

The Director role is a great idea, but there is also potential to abuse the position to support preferred players. So far however most matches and the classes in general do seem to be balanced. It will be interesting to see how the game will develop will all the new exciting elements coming to Darwin Project in the next months and if the balance can be kept. So far Darwin Project is one of my favorite BR-games, because it offers a unique experience and every match plays a bit differently.  

8/10