Eufloria thoughts

Some of you may have heard of Eufloria, an indie game developed by Rudolf Kremers and Alex May (yes, I know; actual people). You may have seen screenshots on Steam, and thought something along the lines of- "Huh. That looks pretty neat."

And it kind of is. The game is essentially a very basic RTS/ space sim. You have asteroids on which grow trees. The trees make seedlings, which you can tell to go to other asteroids and make more trees. If there are bad seedlings on the other asteroids, your dudes will fight them. One of you will win, and get to plant your trees on that asteroid.

That's the entire game, more or less; there are different types of trees and such, but it never gets overly complicated (or hasn't yet- I haven't beaten it). The art style looks pretty amazing, and some of the procedural generation stuff is pretty cool. The soundtrack is nice too, with a very ambient, calming quality to it.

The problem lies in just how slow this game is. The enemies NEVER attack you. I played the first five levels in full screen, but after that I windowed it and just waited for my seedlings to build up (I'm actually doing that right now). It's really such a basic thing that it's not even really a distraction, as everything is automated, pretty much. This means that you're not really playing a game, in the end, but rather doing a few clicks a minute, and listening to the music (which I have since turned off to listen to my own).

It's a shame, because the game looks like it could be so much more. The AI just really isn't up to scratch though, and having to wait 5 minutes to build up an army big enough to take out their defences just sucks. If the game had multiplayer, it would be way better. But it doesn't.

A disappointment, in the end. A nice idea, poorly thought through.