Eufloria - Review

Cross Pollination
A deceptively engaging strategy game goes to seed.

Eufloria is the sort of game that might be overlooked by a lot of gamers. It's a game about flowers, yes. It's an independent game, yes. It's also the sort of game that is labeled “casual” by the sorts of people who might take a look at a few screenshots and dismiss the game as too easy or too simple, but dismissing it would be the wrong thing to do. Eufloria is a surprisingly deep real-time strategy game, a space colonization adventure cleverly hiding behind the facade of flowers.

In Eufloria, you'll be using flower petals (known as seedlings) to take control of asteroids. Once in possession of a planetoid, you can use your little lemmings to create trees that will either create more seedlings or help to defend your planet. Different planets have different attribute levels that will lead to creating seedlings with differing levels of power, strength, and speed. The mechanics all work very well, but things can get strung out as your empire expands. Often, you'll be fighting on a front that's at least three or four planets away from your home. Selecting and directing your minions to where the fighting is fierce can be a bit of a pain, and there are times when your actions don't seem to matter because of the snail's pace that some of the units take to cross the battlefield.

The graphics have their own sense of style, which is not to say that similar styles haven't been tried before, but everything in the game is consistently good looking and I never experience slow-down or glitches. The HUD and interfaces are stripped down, but stylish in a simple way. The game's sound track includes over two hours of ambient music, and it does a of a good job of setting the mood without being obtrusive. The game's sound effects are minimal but effective in this context, and, of course, you can adjust the volume levels to your liking if you'd rather listen to some other music while retaining the sound effects and audio alerts.


The game sports a story mode with twenty-five focused, goal-oriented levels, and, while you may be moving faster than the learning curve on the first few levels, the difficulty ramps up as time goes on, with later levels requiring a bit of time to clear. The game also includes a battle mode with six different arenas where you can fight with several other flower colors, trying to take over a cluster of asteroids. While these battles might be lengthy, they aren't really that hard. I never really lost planets to invading forces, the whole game is just one inescapable march from the start to when the last enemy planet falls to your control. Eventually, you do unlock a harder mode, and you'll probably want to use that mode if you want to spend a bit more time with the game.

However, you might get a little tired of the game. Maybe it was just me, but after a few hours, the whole thing starts to become formulaic. The game tries to make up for this fact by randomizing the planet attributes and placement, but you might not even notice these changes. The fields will still look pretty similar and the way you play the game will hardly change at all. Maybe I'll come back to Eufloria in a few days and get excited about it again, but I feel like I may have already seen most of what the game has to offer.

Eufloria had my heart from the very beginning: from the interesting art style and cool music to the slick and relatively intuitive gameplay, the experience was a nice one. It wasn't long, though, before the game was wearing a little thin. It doesn't help that the game costs a hefty twenty dollars. When most of the crowd of indie games cost half as much or less, it's hard to justify purchasing the game. If you're considering getting a game like this, you might want to think twice: the game has a certain elegance, but it faces issues with replayability and longevity. You should probably want to give the demo a few hours before you make a purchase.