In Multiwinia's TRON-like world, you move little dudes around as they spawn. That's mostly all there is to it. Some of the incidental rules vary. You might be trying to occupy victory locations, cart a statue back to your base, or capture solar panels to fuel your rocket. But it's all a matter of telling little guys where to go and letting them shoot their little pew pew lasers when they get there. You won't find the trappings of your usual real time strategy game: there's no economy, there's no fog of war, there are no unit types, there's no base building. The gameplay consists mostly of directing an unending stream of obliging multiwinians. It's not unlike aiming a fire hose.

Oh, wait, did I mention the crates? Because that messes up everything I just wrote. New gameplay literally drops out of the sky and into the world of Multiwinia. The goodies in these crates are the real reasons to play this otherwise simple streamlined real time strategy game. The crates are the source of ten weird scenes from inside the cyber mine.

Read ten reasons you should be playing Multiwinia after the jump.

10. Shields
Multiwinians are all created equal. No one is stronger or faster or more accurate than anyone else. So it's easy to eyeball who's going to win a battle by the relative size of the forces. But some power-ups mess up that equation. For instance, the shield offers temporary immunity from damage, which will throw off nearly any balance of power. It's also a great way to trump other powerups. Napalm strike incoming. My shielded multiwinians laugh!

9. Flame turrets
Mostly, there's no base-building in Multiwinia. But then you get one of the turrets, which you can drop anywhere to change the strategic balance of the map (make sure there are nearby little dudes to work the turret or someone else is just going to grab it!). Rocket turrets are okay, but armies of screaming burning multiwinians make the flame turrets the real go-to powerup for maximum carnage at a strategic chokepoint.

8. Eggs
It's like Easter, but with teeth! A handful of cute little eggs will turn into hostile monsters. Drop them near a spawn point and see what comes up. Spiders, triffids, worms, who knows? Whatever it is, it'll be hungry. Oh, be sure not to drop the eggs directly into a crowd of multiwinians. They'll just destroy them before they hatch to make omelets.

7. Meteor showers
This is one of the more lovely power-ups. Like a scene from Armageddon, clusters of meteorites come streaking through the sky on orange trails, slamming into armies of multiwinians, sending them flying. At least that's the idea. If there's one thing meteor strikes aren't, it's precise!

6. Futurewinians
I'm not sure what's going on with these guys (I presume they're from the future), but they show up in a massive UFO and start beaming up multiwinians. I don't know what's going to happen to the captives, but I suspect it'll be uncomfortable in the pants area. At any rate, the abducted multiwinians won't be doing any fighting and the other player has a big fat distracting UFO hovering over his armies.

5. Plague
One of the coolest things about the crates in Multiwinia is that they're not always beneficial. You're conditioned to expect something wonderful that you can use to toast enemy multiwinians. You're lulled into a false sense of security as you send your little dudes racing after the falling crates. But just when you least expect it, you get one of the bad crates. Such as this deadly plague that not only kills off the infected multiwinians, but spreads to nearby uninfected multiwinians. Quarantine? Or death charge into the nearest enemy multiwinians?

4. Subversion
On most maps, there will be a great big swirling front of multiwinians killing each other, with smaller skirmishes on the sidelines. There's no better way to turn a sideline into a streamrolling than the conversion power-up, which grants a group of multiwinians subversion ray guns to sway enemies to their side. With these, two small groups fighting each can other become one larger unopposed group.

3. UFO soul harvester
In Darwinia, the single-player game that preceded Multiwinia, the darwinians left behind souls. These were an important resource for solving that game's puzzles. But in Multiwinia, war is a virtual meat-grinder stickman hell, so there's not much point messing with souls, which are little dots left behind by dead multiwinians. Unless you get an engineer or a UFO soul harvester. These guys fly around the battlefield, suck up souls, and then drop them off at spawn generators for a free influx of resurrected darwinians. Using the fire hose analogy, it's like a sudden burst of water pressure.

2. Nuclear strikes
The submarines from Defcon, Introversion's last game, surface and launch nuclear missiles, which slowly and inevitably trace dotted lines across the skies of Multiwinia as they arc into their target area. This gives the victim plenty of time to think about the devastation before actually experiencing it.

1. Ants
Or rather, ANTS! ANTS!!!!!! OH GOD, AAAAAANTSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!! There is no power-up more hated than the ant hive, which is an unending source of creepy killer cyber-ants who aren't content to simply kill multiwinians. Instead, they carry them back into their hive, where cyber-god only knows what happens to the poor little victims. These ants range far and wide, and they make no distinction between friendly or enemy multiwinians.