There are not a whole lot of games out there that let you play as a cephalopod. Even fewer ask you to stop an alien invasion as an octopus. In fact, I am pretty sure Darwin’s Paradox may quite literally be the only game in existence with that concept. As it turns out, it is a pretty compelling setup for a platformer, and the world of Darwin’s Paradox utterly revels in the absurdity of the premise, both narratively and mechanically. What results is a memorable little game that packs in a lot of imagination and variety, although a few issues with the platforming keep it from achieving true greatness.
At the beginning of Darwin’s Paradox, our eight-legged protagonist, Darwin, is living a quiet life in the sea with another octopus friend. The ideal life, really. But one day, a UFO unceremoniously disturbs the peace by abducting both Darwin and his friend, dumping you into the guts of a massive mechanical facility for a corporation called UFOOD that makes, you guessed it, cans of disgusting slop. So Darwin sets out on a journey to escape, find his friend, and unwittingly dismantle an alien plot to take control of all humans and Earth in the process.
While Darwin’s Paradox is not particularly story-heavy, and there is not a single word of dialogue in the game, I actually find the game’s aesthetic approach to its concept the most engrossing thing. Across the game’s two dozen or so levels and 12-hour runtime, it is crammed with little visual details that help give you an idea of who these beings are and what they are trying to do. I would honestly compare it to something like Destroy All Humans, in the way it clearly embraces the extraterrestrial paranoia of the 1940s and ’50s sci-fi.
“Darwin’s Paradox may quite literally be the only game in existence with that concept.”
The other factor that helps here is the quality of animation and the pure aesthetic of the game, which often feels like a Pixar or DreamWorks film in motion while you are playing. Little files are also sprinkled throughout the game to give you extra context, like newspaper clippings or recipes for questionable-looking food. There are consistent little moments of joy in seeing the hapless little octopus explore this foreign world and accidentally cause trouble for this entire alien civilization. It is, unfortunately, slightly let down by one of the most unsatisfying, abrupt endings I have seen in a long time, putting a light damper on an otherwise joyous experience.
But the crux of what Darwin’s Paradox revolves around really is the fact that you are an octopus. Seagulls attack you, looking for a tasty snack. Underwater sections, which are usually infuriating in platformers, actually give you higher mobility because you are a sea creature. Most importantly, your suckers let you cling to any surface you climb on. That last fact is the killer app of Darwin’s Paradox, and how the game really puts its own stamp on the platforming genre.
While most games in the genre focus on jumping between platforms or things like that, Darwin’s Paradox is quite literally about climbing around the environment, clinging to pipes, walls and ceilings to find the way forward. It is a perspective-changing experience that initially requires you to rethink how you navigate environments. For example, instead of jumping over a fence to reach a door, you might need to head backward, climb up the wall, go across the ceiling, then down to the door, going through it upside down.
Darwin’s Paradox consistently focuses on building its puzzles around that core ability, then layering in a bunch of other little elements on top of it. You need to avoid electrical wires, jump to avoid traps, time your climbing to progress across spinning gears and things like that. There are numerous little gimmicks you come up against, too, like bathing in radioactive goop that keeps bloodthirsty rats away but makes Darwin slippery so he cannot cling to surfaces until you wash it off with water.
But that is just one segment of Darwin’s Paradox’s gameplay, as you also have to juggle swimming sections, puzzles and a surprisingly large focus on stealth. The stealth options are, admittedly, surprisingly robust, as Darwin can use camouflage to blend into the environment and shoot ink to block cameras and lights or activate switches.
And while all these elements click together nicely, it does become noticeable that Darwin’s Paradox can feel a little too demanding at times, and a little too unguided at others. I went into this game expecting it to be a fairly laid-back experience, and ultimately found exactly the opposite: a tough-as-nails platformer that truly demands a lot from the player, with lengthy sections that challenge your skills. Most of the time, I do not mind the challenge in platformers, but in the case of Darwin’s Paradox, that punishing difficulty feels at odds with the sort of cute slapstick story. Especially because there are sections focused on exploration and fairly simplistic puzzles, bookended by extra ultra-challenging platforming. It is jarring.
“Darwin’s Paradox can feel a little too demanding at times, and a little too unguided at others.”
But there is another bizarre little issue that crops up with the game’s environment design, and how that otherwise gorgeous aesthetic can sometimes get in the way. Darwin’s Paradox emphasizes really detailed environments, with lots of little elements happening in the background. While you are moving along a 2D plane, everything is in 3D, with dozens of characters sometimes in the background or lots of moving pieces. Occasionally, this can become distracting, with so much visual clutter on the screen that I had trouble figuring out what was interactable and what was not.
Most of the time, this problem appears in underwater sections, where you are doing things like using wooden boards to hide from spotlights. But with so much debris in the water, there were a few times I ended up trying to hide behind something that was actually in the background. On top of that, there were a noticeable number of moments when I had trouble figuring out where to go in these underwater segments, because the environments are simply so large, and I do not feel like the game always does the best job of signposting where you need to go.
These little frustrations certainly do not ruin the experience, but they are present enough to become noticeable, holding back what is otherwise an imaginative platformer. And that is kind of the crux of how I feel about Darwin’s Paradox at large. It is a fun romp that I enjoyed from start to finish, but it will not have the lasting impact on me that so many unique little platformers do, like Super Meat Boy or A Hat in Time. The mind-bending wall climbing of Darwin’s Paradox is something that feels genuinely innovative. I just wish there were a little more refinement to the overall experience and a better sense of payoff at the end.
