Eufloria Review

I even have a StarCraft t-shirt!

The RTS genre is my Demon’s [sic] Souls. Whenever I play an RTS I die a lot until I figure out how to use the cheats, but I’m something of a battered househusband as I love the genre despite my ineptitude, and can’t give it up which is why the beginning of Eufloria was something of a surprise.

I was on a roll, breezing through the levels one after another with ease. Then all of a sudden I was stuck. I found myself confronted with a genuine strategy conundrum. It would be here normally when I would be forced to resort to cheats, but instead I persevered. For the moment I am afraid I better fill in some more details and leave you in suspense.

Eufloria has a hard-on for minimalism. The graphics consist of only three major elements: the asteroids that act as bases, the seedlings that are your infantry and workers, and the laser mines that are your heavy artillery, but the true beauty is in the detail. The stronger seedlings look more vibrant than the weaker ones, and the tougher a laser mine the bigger it is. They are a surprisingly threatening sight when you see one floating slowly to your asteroid and your defences are low as they pack a considerable punch. Who knew flowers could be terrifying? Oh, and when the seedlings take over a asteroid they plant themselves in the ground as if impregnating an egg; everything looks and feels organic, though the story’s narration give the game a distinct sci-fi tone (it was once called Dyson after all) that makes things feel a tad uneasy. In a good way.

The minimalist style does lead to a couple of problems, though. In the heat of the battle it can be hard to make out what sort of trees an asteroid has and all too easily you can find yourself accidentally taking over an asteroid with several defensive trees when you thought it had none. In fact there’s quite a few avenues for stuffing up through no fault of your own, but more on that in a moment.

These defensive trees act as turrets and grow laser mines, and there are also Dyson trees which produce more seedlings and grow flowers which you can plant to enhance defensive or Dyson trees, granting the former the ability to grow laser mines, and the latter the ability to produce even stronger, glowing seedlings. You’ll need to choose your enhancements carefully as there is often very thin line between failure and success.

Now this may sound like a very simple basis for a strategy game, and it is. Indeed after playing the first few levels you’d be forgiven for thinking that it was nothing but one pretty Zerg rush after another (and how pretty it is to see several hundred seedlings devouring an enemy’s asteroid, and harrowing to see the same thing happen to yours!) against AI that likes to twiddle its thumbs, but remember when I got stuck?

Yeah, a few hours in and things change drastically. When you’ve got laser mines and enhanced Dyson trees at your disposal the AI realises that it’s capable of attacking, not just defending, and you realise that you can’t just Zerg rush any asteroid you want because the AI undoubtedly has reinforcements in reserve; of course the same applies to the enemy’s attacks. You’ll need to keep reserves behind your front line in case the enemy amasses a particularly nasty attacking line up, or gets overly courageous; indeed the AI’s aggression can be taken advantage of by luring them into a seemingly unguarded asteroid then overwhelming them while eating through a good number of their seedlings, and they’re just as happy to entice you in the same way.

In fact quite often there’s a comical back and forth where you and your enemies seedling chase each other from asteroid to asteroid, though this childish endeavour in the harder levels usually means you’re about to get bum rushed: the AI knows a trick or two.

You see Eufloria is all about territory. You’ve got to slowly edge your way forward, attacking and defending at the same time and making sure that you never commit too many seedlings forward or you’ll find them sapped away in no time, and without a defence in reserve that could be the game. It’s an RTS stripped down to the basics: territory, defence and domination. No in-depth tech trees here, although these are probably the most technologically advanced trees to feature in an RTS!

Which brings us to a few other major bug bears. The first is the control. Due to the simplicity of proceedings it has translated from PC to PS3 far better than most RTSs would. You navigate around the asteroids with the right analogue stick “clicking” on them to select how many seedlings you want to send out or selecting the asteroid then holding down X to send all the seedlings on said asteroid forth in one slick motion. The problem is that it’s all too easy to accidentally send them to the wrong asteroid, and there’s no way to call them back before they get in range of their destination, by which time you’ll probably have lost a fair few of them through enemy defences.

On one of the harder levels I had spent nearly an hour carefully taking over one side of the map only to have one slip of the analogue stick lose me the game. Which brings us to our next problem.

Many levels can be long, some lasting up to one and a half hours if you’re as slow and careful as I am, and there is no way to save mid-game. While this does mean that there’s constant tension throughout the game it invariably leads to frustration because quite often the most important part of the level is an audacious opening move that can be hard to repeat, so it may take several tries to simply get to a comfortable position in the level you’d just spend 45 minutes on. Though thankfully the procedural generation doesn’t really change the levels much; not good for replayability, but it does keep the frustration levels from going through the roof.

The final problem is with how the campaign is set out. Most of the levels play very differently to each other, and while this does keep things from becoming repetitive, it means that some of the levels are drastically easer or harder than the others and they are not ordered from easiest to hardest at all. Sometimes you’ll come off a one hour epic that had you clenching your teeth the whole time and be confronted with a twenty minute cakewalk nearly as easy as some of the tutorial levels!

Sure some respite might be nice, but it means that there’s not a very satisfying feeling of overall progression, nor is there satisfying pacing. Despite the minimalist story about asteroids, plants, growers and mysterious greys proving to be intriguing the campaign does sometimes feel like a collection of skirmishes

On the bright side these skirmishes are generally of an extremely high quality, and the satisfaction of beating a hard level? Well, I’ll put you out of your misery. I finally beat that level. It took me one and a half hours of frenzied play, but by the end of it I was in control. I crushed the enemy’s seedlings as if they were...seedlings! I couldn’t help but grin from the intense satisfaction; I felt as if I had not just finished a level, but a whole game itself.

Oh, and as you go along in the campaign you unlock real skirmishes (or you can unlock them in options if you feel like it!) that offer a more traditional one on one RTS fare. Well, as traditional Eufloria can be. Once again the difficulty goes up and down, though it’s far more forgivable in the context of actual skirmishes.

Eventually you’ll unlock Dark Matter Mode (or, once again, whenever you feel like it). A harder retelling of the campaign set against a stunning black instead of white background that gives the game a far more sci-fi feel, doing away with the organic and raising the tension and challenge significantly. The AI becomes more aggressive still, and unlike in the normal campaign there are fewer moments of twiddling thumbs; but it does still have these moments and once you’ve survived the harder normal campaign levels the beginning of Dark Matter Mode will feel almost unnecessary in comparison, though as you go along it does get harder than the vanilla campaign.

Speaking of twiddling thumbs Eufloria requires patience to play. A lot of the gameplay consists of sending out scouts to find out how many enemies are around, what flowers they hold control of, and what the strengths of the other asteroids are, or spending time erecting your defences and then waiting for your numbers rebuild (it takes 10 seedlings to plant a tree) after your defences are up and reinforced—you can sacrifice seedlings to improve the stats of most asteroids which results in it producing stronger, faster or higher HP seedlings and laser mines.

You can double the speed of gameplay simply by tapping L1. Apparently to make things more difficult in reality it does away with a lot of the waiting and would be a welcome addition to many RTSs games when you find yourself simply sitting around waiting for your units to build or your resources to be resourced.

However the sped up game, while just as beautiful, does not really gel with the background music which is generally quite slow and as a result can feel a little out of synch, however in terms of gameplay it is absolutely a God send, and there is a certain joy in watching the swarms of seedlings swagger around like great storms of bees in fast forward. They look all the more frightening.

If you’re willing to put in the time and the effort, and put up with a little frustration and a lot of inconsistency you’ll find yourself confronted by an extremely challenging RTS that plays very differently to most, and looks fantastically relaxing too; of course you’ll be too busy perching on the edge of your seat to notice that most of the time. Oh, and for obvious reasons you must be patient, though there are a few moments of frenzied activity in most games, but usually it’s a slow burn, which is good, because you’ll need time to think and plan your next move, or perhaps simply wait for the enemy to waltz into your trap.

Right now I’m just waiting for the PS3 to turn back on so that I can get back to acting out the Grower’s plans for universe domination!