Darwin's Paradox Review

Darwin's Paradox is a short but memorable cartoonish platformer starring a lovable, versatile little octopus.

Darwin's Paradox takes the 2D puzzle-platforming sensibilities of a game like Limbo or Inside and makes it distinctly less creepy and unsettling. Whereas those games presented elements of light body horror and spooky high-contrast compositions, Darwin's Paradox evokes classic cartoons starring goofball protagonists in vibrant, colorful settings. The result is a pleasant little gem of a game with loads of variety that makes the most out of its relatively short playtime.

There's a core comedic premise to Darwin's Paradox that begins subtly and then slowly becomes more obvious as time goes on. Your eponymous little octopus, Darwin, just wants to get back home to the ocean. But on his journey he haplessly bumbles his way through what is clearly a full-scale alien invasion of Earth. In most games, the hero would steel their resolve to take on the alien menace, but Darwin is just an octopus. For all he knows, this is normal among land-dwellers, and he doesn't really seem to care either way. So he's less of a hero and more of a Mr. Magoo, with his own perception limited to the threats around him as he gets flung around a hostile world and just tries his best to survive. We as the (human) viewers understand what's happening in a different context than he does, and that makes the story work on two levels at once.

Though he's not a hero, Darwin certainly has an expansive move set, which makes the game's platforming feel natural and fluid. They all trace back to the behaviors and adaptations of real-life octopi, like suckers to stick to walls, shooting ink to escape predators, and camouflage to blend in with their environment. And like a real octopus, he's most mobile underwater, where you have full 360-degree freedom of movement. Though traversing your way through land environments feels good, going underwater is immediately more natural. It really accentuates the feeling that you're a fish out of water the rest of the time.

As Darwin makes his way through sewers, factories, science labs, and more, you often have to avoid danger or solve simple environmental puzzles. Darwin is just a little cephalopod, not a fighter, so all of your tools are built around avoiding danger rather than doing damage. One moment you might need to crawl your way past a squad of aliens and camouflage at the right time, or you might need to shoot a gob of ink to hit a button controlling a conveyor belt, or climb up a wall to make your way into a different room. When you're underwater, your ink creates a temporary cloud of black that lets you sneak past carnivorous eels. The variety means that you're never doing the same thing for very long, which keeps the combat-free adventure moving briskly through the roughly six-hour playtime.

It helps that the world feels so visually cohesive and looks very nice. Though the game takes place on a 2D plane, there's a lot of depth to backgrounds and often those will interplay with the action happening in the foreground. As the adventure progresses, you get a distinct sense of visual style in this world, a retro sci-fi aesthetic contrasted against the beauty of marine life.

Of course, the world is a dangerous place for a little octopus, especially with aliens about, so you'll frequently get eaten or squished underfoot. A generous checkpointing system means you're never put too far back, but there is a lot of learning-by-death. Some traps are meant to be difficult to see or understand until the first time they kill you, and after that it may take a couple of tries to figure out how to avoid them and then execute it properly. That makes for a fair bit of repetition, and sometimes I bristled at needing to repeat a section that I had already figured out and just needed to nail the execution all at once. Very occasionally I would make it past a tricky part only to be caught up by the next learn-by-death trap, which was particularly annoying.

Softening the blow was that the deaths were mostly comedic and cute. This is above all a cartoon-like presentation, accentuated in animated cutscenes where Darwin will emote even more than usual. But even in the regular stages he has a lot of character and expression, so you can read a lot into his body language, even as an octopus. The aliens are similarly funny and expressive, with a campy 1950s flying saucer aesthetic and a lot of visual cues expressing their hamfisted plans to trick humanity. Very early in the game, I saw a box for their company "UFOOD," and it took me far longer than I'd like to admit to notice the pun of the first three letters.

Darwin's Paradox is short but densely packed with variety. Revolving around an octopus is a stroke of brilliance on the part of developer ZDT Studio, since it gives you a wide array of traversal options and abilities that extend naturally from what any child knows about the marine animal. Those options make the whole adventure move briskly as you rotate between different types of puzzle and platforming challenges without ever lingering on one for too long. It's a strong debut for Darwin and for ZDT, and I hope we see more from both of them.

SOURCE: Gamespot

The Good

• Lovable protagonist Darwin is styled like a classic bumbling cartoon character
• Octopus abilities give gameplay loads of variety to sustain the adventure
• Lots of environmental comedy as Darwin navigates an apparent alien invasion

The Bad

• Some traps engineered to learn-by-death, which can make repeating from a checkpoint frustrating