Darwin's Dilemma is an awesome game that I first played 13 years ago. It is a strategy game in which you have a limited time to complete the task of smashing together similar organisms so that they evolve into a higher organism. For example, one of the beginning screens may have several squares with a picture of a paramecium on each square. Your job is to make the squares collide with each other within a set period of time. When all of the paramecium squares have collided, it changes into a higher organism such as an ant or a frog.
This will complete the screen and move you on to the next level.
The next level screen will have squares that contain the next level of higher organisms. So after the paramecium screen, there will be a screen that has ants and frogs. Later screens will move you up the food chain to mammals and larger mammals. Also as the screens progress the game becomes more and more challenging. The game is fun because you are seemingly re-enacting the theoretical process of evolution. In contrast to games where the goal is to destroy life, Darwin's Dilemma is a game where you actually create life and help to bring into formation all the different species.
There is a surprise at
the end of the game, and I would hate to spoil it for you! I remember that I actually reached the end of the game just once in the past. After that the game mysteriously disappeared from the computer, just as it had mysteriously appeared several weeks earlier. Did I mention that the computer I was playing Darwin's Dilemma on was at work? Or that the boss ended up talking to me about how I was spending too much time playing games on the computer and not working? Darwin's Dilemma is such a great game that it is almost worth being fired for!
What else can I say about it? It is a fast paced game where you have to develop a logical strategy in order to complete each screen. If you fail to complete the screen, you have the opportunity to repeat it. There are also special buttons that allow you to move around the screens at a faster pace. Darwin's Dilemma is a game that comes to us from the simpler times of the early 1990s. It is a thinking game where there is lots of fun and no blood shed.
