Eufloria, formerly known as Dyson, is a real-time strategy game that has been around as a demo for a while and recently came out as a full-fledged release. I really enjoyed it as a demo, so I just had to pick it up.
What catches me about Eufloria is its unique theme. Instead of rehashing one of the three common RTS themes (medieval / fantasy war, modern / realistic war, or future / space war), Eufloria shows off its own. You are in command of a race of seedlings, which are insect-like self-replicating machines. You colonize asteroids by sacrificing seedlings to build Dyson trees that automatically mine the resources in the asteroid and produce more seedlings. Each asteroid has a unique combination of resources that determines the seedlings’ power, speed and health. You have to fight off other races, as well as mysterious grey seedlings, for control of the sector. It sounds closest to the space war genre, but the floral spin on the presentation and abstract visuals make Eufloria stand out.
Unfortunately, Eufloria’s gameplay is lacking. It shares the “slippery slope” problem endemic to so many RTS’s. If you’re doing well, it becomes easier and easier to win until victory is just a foregone conclusion. On the other hand, if you are doing poorly, it is basically impossible to come back. The strategy in Eufloria typically boils down to getting enough asteroids under your command to build decent-sized army, then just throwing increasingly ridiculous numbers of seedlings at your enemies until you’ve finally conquered them all. What tends to happen is that you spend the first one quarter to one third of the game building up your empire, waiting painfully slowly to accumulate the ten seedlings to build each new Dyson tree. Then you manage to conquer one or two other empires, marking the most challenging part of the game. Once that’s done, you usually have a large enough empire to win the game just by force of numbers. It can be incredibly satisfying to attack your enemy’s last outpost from three different angles with 200 seedlings each, but it doesn’t feel challenging. The gameplay is not helped by the fact that other empires ordinarily do not attack you until quite a bit of time has gone by. Instead, they will happily sit and watch, even if your empire is adjacent and is defended by only three seedlings which could easily be crushed by their 40 seedlings. If they do get to a point where they attack you, chances are you’ve already done so poorly that you’re going to lose the game anyway. It’s kind of a shame because there are a few really good gameplay hooks (Do you specialize in power, health, or speed? Do you build a tree now, or do you hold onto those 10 seedlings to defend?) that never seem to be explored.
I’m also a bit disappointed by Eufloria’s game modes. At the start, you only have access to the main campaign / story mode, which isn’t so much a story as a series of gimmicky scenarios arranged in roughly increasing order of difficulty. If you get far enough in the story, you can unlock eight skirmish levels where you battle multiple enemy races. I unfortunately cannot be any more specific than “far enough”, as I have yet to unlock a single skirmish level even after completing almost half of the levels in story mode. Furthermore, there is no multiplayer mode, which is something that RTS’s in general just cry out for. I do agree, however, that Eufloria’s rules as they are now would not lead to a great multiplayer experience.
On the other hand, I think Eufloria functions very well as an experience, rather than a game of strategic decision-making. The abstract visuals and ambient soundtrack make for an atmosphere of beauty and calm – quite an accomplishment for a war game without diplomacy or compromise. As minimalist as the graphics are, they convey a huge amount of information about the location and size of armies the condition of each asteroid. Even the seedlings themselves are informative – fast seedlings have large wings, strong seedlings have large bodies, and powerful seedlings have long stingers, enabling you to size up an enemy’s army at a glance. The interface is a perfect example of minimalism, too. Everything is done with the mouse – a drag and drop sends your seedlings to another asteroid, and you can select subsets of your seedlings with a double-click, a right click, or a drag and click. The mouse wheel zooms in and out in a smooth motion, and it’s very satisfying to go from seeing the entire campaign all at once to taking in all the action on a single asteroid. I may have said a lot of negative stuff about Eufloria’s gameplay, but I don’t want to ignore the fact that it really does connect with me on a different level from most other RTS’s.
To sum up, I do have mixed feelings about Eufloria. I’ve seen a suggestion that the loose gameplay and beautifully realized atmosphere makes it more of a toy than a game – something to run in the background and play with sporadically while you do your bank balance – and I am inclined to agree. If you are expecting a deeply strategic game where the fate of your campaign constantly hinges on carefully considered decisions, do not get Eufloria. But if you’re looking for an enjoyable experience with some RTS elements thrown in, Eufloria is certainly worth a try.
