Most real time strategy games involve military conflict of some sort. It’s part of the genre really, one military force against another, at war, requiring the player to take strategic command. Eufloria does an interesting job of almost breaking this mold. Technically it’s still centering around a conflict, though instead of tanks and soldiers you fight with plant seeds.
The conflict is certainly more peaceful when it involves plants. The light graphics and airy music and sound effects make this a fairly relaxing and serine experience to play.
The object is to control a region of planetoids before the opponent destroys your forces. In order to control a planet you will have to sacrifice some of your seedlings to plant new trees, the trees will in turn spawn more seedlings over time. Most of the trees will anyway, there are also defensive trees which will instead provide protection from enemy forces. The planets themselves have different energy levels as well and will spawn faster or stronger seedlings depending on the planet’s attributes.
In the early stages it is fairly easy but over time the enemy colonies become more aggressive and will have better defenses. The real key to combat is advantages in numbers, which means owning more planets. Unfortunately, this is where the game play starts to fall apart. Later stages become quickly and easily overwhelming, especially as the enemy starts deploying the large flower pods which can easily wipe out even a large army of seedlings with little to no effort. Much of the play time involved is essentially just sitting and waiting for more seedlings to spawn. When one of the notes in the update is “Updated the gameplay to be faster-paced and more interesting, with more strategic balance” you’ve got issues. Thankfully they put some effort into correcting it. Even so there is a LOT of “sit and wait” gameplay here, especially when you start facing defensive trees which will require large numbers of seed pods to overcome them.
Another minor issues I’ve had, the game doesn’t seem to always record progress made properly. This admittedly may have been an error on my part though it was a bit frustrating when I found I had to replay the first ten or so levels after I’d already completed them.
Generally the game is a fun departure from the traditional strategy game. The design is simple though definitely more complex than it seems on the surface. It is hindered somewhat buy it’s slowish pacing but it’s still a pretty enjoyable experience. My recommendation however would still be to look for it on some sort of sale as the base price of $15 is a little high for what you get
