Saturday, April 28, 2012

Eufloria - Review

http://www.eufloria-game.com

This game was a wonderful surprise. I love real time strategy games. The fact that this was an RTS was the main reason I bought it. Well that and the fact that it was 50% off on Steam. So I took a chance on an odd looking game and I've been in love ever since. When asked to describe it I usually start with Beautiful. Followed quickly with Relaxing, Easy to play but Hard to master, and finally Unique.

Beautiful - Relaxing - Easy to Play - Hard to Master - Unique

Official Eufloria Trailer

According to Steam I have played this game 37 hours. I'm never really sure how accurate those numbers are. Does that include time spent playing offline? Either way I have spent a good bit of time in this game. I have beat the game and I was halfway through the Dark Matter storyline when I reformatted... So now I'm running through from the beginning again just so I can beat the game. What does that tell you about this game?

Something else that is unique about this game is it only requires a mouse or a touch screen. I have been plugging my laptop into the tv and playing from the sofa. The downside to this is I keep falling asleep. The music is so soothing and relaxing. It goes perfectly with the beautiful art throughout the storyline.

According to the story, we are planting trees on asteroids. These trees produce little seedlings that can be used to fight other invading nations of seedlings. I like to think of the planets as Atoms and I'm fighting viruses inside a body. 

The Planets

     Planet 1  Planet 2  Planet 3  Planet 4

Each planet has its own characteristics. (Energy, Strength, Speed) Typically the larger the planet the better these characteristics will be. These characteristics are important because all things produced from a planet will have its parent planets characteristics as well. Holding a large planet can make all the difference on a difficult level. Each planet also has a limit to the number of trees it can support as well as a max range it can send seedlings.

In the Options there is a checkbox for Team Symbols. This is a nice feature because sometimes the team colors are very close to the same and its hard to tell what planets are yours.
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The Trees

      image  image  image  image

Its seems as if no two trees are alike. I don't know if that's a true statement or not, but I have been watching for any patterns in appearance and they all seem fairly random. I seen one tree grow all if its branches straight out sideways! I have never seen that again and I've been watching because I now want a screen shot. Over time the trees continue to grow based on the size of its planet. image

There are two types of trees. Dyson Trees and Defense Trees. As the Dyson trees mature they grow additional branches. Each branch starts to grow a Seedling. Once the Seedling is fully grown, it wiggles back and forth and finally drops off the Dyson tree making room for a new Seedling. The image on the right clearly shows the different size Seedlings on a Dyson Tree.

The Defense trees grow the same way. However they produce little explosive clusters. When an enemy Seedling comes near a planet with one of these trees, the clusters will drop off the tree and chase the enemy. Once they are near they will explode causing damage to all enemies nearby.  In the three images below here you see a one coming in and exploding near two enemies.
image  image  image

A planet with several Defense trees is a hard planet to capture. However that extra defense comes at a cost of fewer seedlings produced. This is just one of the many things that have to be kept in balance as the game progresses. In the short video here I am planting a single tree.

Planting a tree

The Seedlings

The Seedlings come in slight variations as well. However their major features tell you a little bit about each one.
A large body = High Energy. A long nose = Very Strong. Large Wings = Very Fast.
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imageWhen sending these little seedlings out to explore you can choose all (Left Mouse Button) or an exact number (Right Mouse Button). Alternately you can choose between the different characteristics (Energy, Strength, Speed) by first double clicking a planet.

They have little lasers as their weapons. The Seedlings will shoot at both enemies and enemy trees. Once a tree has taken enough damage it explodes leaving an opening to the planets core. Seedlings will rush to this opening, run down the path, and explode. This brings the planets energy down. Once the energy level reaches zero the planet is yours and the opening is replaced with a Dyson tree. See the short video below for an up-close battle.

A Small Battle

Other Stuffimage

There are Flowers that can be added to your planets that create laser satellites or more powerful seedlings. These satellites can shoot multiple enemies at once. Satellites can also make or break your game.

Since this "review" has turned into more of a "how-to" I'll stop here and post play through of all the levels as I find time. Here is my Eufloria play through playlist... SWiLE's Eufloria Playlist
I will be providing little to no commentary on these videos and they will all be accelerated to at least 2X normal time.

Conclusion

This game is a true oxymoron. The music matches its look and feel perfectly. So calm, tranquil, and peaceful... while at the same time a swarm of 200 enemy seedlings are battling you for control of a key planet. Do you push all your seedlings into the battle leaving other planets unprotected? Or maybe attack another nearby planet in hopes some of the enemy seedlings break off from the battle giving you the time to secure that key planet? Others watching me play this game have looked on with a confused look on their face. Why is an adult angry at a game that looks like something that should be playing in the background while one receives a massage?

Why? This is a real RTS that's why! The beauty of it is, anyone can pick it up and play, its so easy. Yet later in the game there is real strategy needed to win. What to plant first, when to attack, when not to attack, when to push and when to retreat. Exactly what any great RTS should have.

In fact after only playing a few levels I bought two more copies so my boys could play against me... ya... that's when I found there is no multi player mode. And that alone is my only complaint of the game. This game screams for multi player gameplay but its missing. This game is available on Steam and the Apple App store. I highly recommend it!

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