The six game modes range from the relatively straightforward ones like Domination and King of the Hill to complex and very fast paced and challenging ones like Rocket Riot and Blitzkrieg. All modes work around a time limit where players have to either wrack up the most points or complete objectives to win and offer a great deal of variety to keep players satisfied. Most modes like Capture the Statue, Assault and Blitzkrieg give familiar game modes seen on other games (Capture the Flag, Assault and Conquest) a Multiwinian flare. In this way, the game becomes familiar to long-time competitive gamers while being relatively easy for new players to learn. All taken together, Multiwinia provides a captivating and extremely fast-paced multiplayer experience.

Multiwinia mixes together arcade action and simple strategy. Players generally have one goal in mind while playing, and that's to overwhelm opponents as quickly as possible by capturing objectives and production facilities that will pump out vast, flat, armies. Multiwinians work more like Lemmings than units from a real-time strategy game. You don't command them to attack specific targets. Instead, they can only be directed to different areas where they'll automatically open fire on the first enemy they see. Units can be upgraded to Officers and serve different purposes. Officers can be set up to direct units to a designated point on the map, and setting up more than one can create custom routes to automatically get soldiers to the front lines. Alternatively, Officers can gather up nearby Multiwinians and put them into a tight block formation, essentially turning them into a solid wall of death. The drawback of putting units into formation is that they'll stop using grenades and the whole group is vulnerable to flanking attacks and from behind.


Unfortunately, some of the formation movement commands can be a little limited. Formation can only walk in a straight line or follow directional officers. You can't, for example, direct a formation to march to a destination then turn to face a different direction. Players will have to watch and wait for the army to move, then redirect as they approach the front lines, which gives A.I. controlled faction an extreme advantage over human ones, since the computer see everything and do everything at once. Similarly, formations cannot be ordered to march backward in retreat, so there's no way to fall back and regroup when being overwhelmed. The only option is to hope the formation holds out long enough for reinforcements to come in a take over, which ties into the game's overall nagging weakness: Multiwinia is mainly geared toward offensive gameplay.

It's not that it's impossible to play defensively, but the game's setup gives offensive players a strong advantage. In games like Domination, players that manage to control the majority of production facilities are all but guaranteed to win through sheer numbers alone. The point becomes clearer when it comes to modes like King of the Hill, Blitzkrieg and most especially Assault, where one faction is designated as a defender. The game helps to balance things out with level design, like putting in water barriers or separating areas out into islands, but defensive players often need special units like turrets to supplement their armies in order to survive. Thankfully, both turrets are provided in both Assault and Blitzkrieg, but otherwise getting them is usually a matter of luck and timing, as you rush a group of Multiwinians to pick up random crate drops in hopes of getting something useful. However, turrets can also be countered with a little luck, like picking up a crate with an air-strike.

Although crate contents can be adjusted to only include "basic" items, the default is to have random - potentially game-ending - power-ups like nuclear strikes, air-strikes or converting enemies to your side. It's almost impossible to tell where these devastating weapons will hit until it's too late, and the Multiwinians move too slow to get to safety anyway. If a player gets one early enough in the match, they could end the game before it even starts. However, that hardly even compares to the Retribution feature, where eliminated players have a chance to take revenge against those still playing using an endless stream of power-ups to wipe out armies and destroy modes of transportation or production that could bring the game to a stand-still until the timer runs out. Hosts have the option to turn Retribution off, but only the most masochistic players would bother to leave it on.


Multiwinia could also benefit from a few extra setup features. For example, there's no way to host a LAN game or a private, password protected, session. The only way to join a game is to keep an eye on the online lobby and join in a friend's game as it pops up, hoping that someone else doesn't take the spot first. On that same note, there's no way to kick players from the game during setup, nor is there a way to designate who plays as defenders and invaders in Assault.

All of this sounds like we dislike Multiwinia, but actually the game's lightening fast sessions are quite addictive and easy to jump straight into. We simply wish there were more customization options for players to take further control of the game. A map editor would have been great, but the 49 unique maps spread out across the different game modes serve nicely for now. It will be interesting to see if a map editor will eventually be released or if the developers, Introversion, will support the game with map packs. Either way, Multiwinia is a great, low-cost, game for people who want fast gameplay that's easy to pick up and learn. The strong emphasis on offensive strategies might turn a few people off, since it relies on a lot of fast multitasking and attention, and the Multiwinians can only follow a few simple commands. Hopefully some of the issues will be addressed in future updates, but in the meantime, it's still a blast to march armies of flat fighters against each other.

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