From Dyson to Eufloria, Happy New Year!

Happy new year! Will I be updating this site more often in 2010? Don't know, I can only hope!

Speaking of which, I have once again moved the site back to miscgamer.com. This is it, no more domain-hopping, no more redirects, this will be the site's eternal resting place until the end of time.

I also moved the World of Goo sub-page here. So this is how everything is going to work from now on. Basically, any games (indie, probably) that I play and end up liking (and I mean REALLY LIKING) will get its own fan-shrine at miscgamer.com/[really-cool-game]/, while companies and larger games series or trends will get their own sub-domain, like Innocent Grey (TYPE-MOON is a special case, so it gets its own site).

Anyways, with that out of the way, allow me to introduce our newest member to the "really-good-indie-game-that-you-should-at-least-try club: Eufloria!

I've had my eyes on Eufloria way back when it was still called Dyson, and was but a small game made for TIGSource's PGC competition. I immediately bought the game when it came out last year, but since then it has been sitting in my hard drive's "to-be-played" folder. Fast-forward to the end of 2009, I'm sitting in front of my laptop at home, having nothing to do, I decided it's time to give this spiffy game a try.

After several days of Eufloria-ing, I have come to the conclusion that the game is much more fun than what I was expecting (not that I had a low expectation or anything). The gameplay is very similar to games like Galcon, but deeper. The procedurally generated contents help keep things fresh, which is always a good thing. If you want to know what the game is like, go check out the sub-page here.

My main complaints: The game is sooooooo slow! I mean, unless you get seedlings with high agility, it takes FOREVER to move from one asteroid to another, and when you have a big map, it sure take some patience to first raise enough seedlings, and then watch them slowly fly to their destination, hopefully not to be obliterated so you have to start the process over.

The control is fairly simple and intuitive, so simple that you can play the game with only the mouse, which is a good thing I supposed, but will result in carpal tunnel after extended play (which is a bad thing, in case you didn't know).

There also seems to be some bugs that need to be fixed. A few times, the game crashed right before I was about to finish a level, which lead to a lot of hair-pulling. Also, not sure if it's a bug or feature, but apparently there are ways to have the AI play for you... or something. So here I am playing the final level, and before I realize it, my army was rushing to their deaths without my telling them to (although the AI did a pretty good job at early expansion)... and there I was, thinking if I had played the game too much that I was just seeing things.

All-in-all, the game is a lot of fun, and can keep you occupied for quite a while. Below is a not-so-play-by-play walkthrough of how I played the last level in the story mode, just to give you an idea of the gameflow.

1. This is the asteroid we started on, which is right smack in the center, surrounded by multiple hostile enemy seedling swarms. The trick here is not to stay in the center, but fast expand to one side and establish a stable base of operation.
2. We got fairly lucky, since there's an empty giant asteroid right next to our starting point with godly attributes waiting to be taken. Capturing this asteroid would be key to our success. However, right after the game starts, a swarm of red seedlings captures the asteroid, what do we do? The trick is to be patient. Immediately after the red seedlings take over, they leave to capture other asteroids, use this opportunity to capture the giant asteroid, and then proceed to make four Dyson Trees. For the rest of the game this asteroid will be used to pump out our main forces.
3. What's this? Grey seedling bases! Unfortunately, they have insane stats, and 60 grey seedlings can obliterate an army of 100+ regular seedlings in an instant, do not approach them until we have a large enough force.
4. All around are asteroids occupied by rival seedling swarms. There are multiple swarm factions, and they like to fight amongst themselves, which gives us a chance to sneak in and capture unsuspecting asteroids.
5. After sending some recon to familiarize ourselves with our surroundings, the decision has been made to start with the territory to our right.
6. Going clockwise, we capture one asteroid at a time. Plant Defense Trees on outlying asteroids while putting the attribute-rich ones to full production of little seedlings.
7. Around when we get to this part, the grey seedlings start randomly obliterating asteroids. At this point, no one is strong enough to fight them, so just cross our fingers and hope they don't pick any of our asteroids. If they do, wait till they leave, then send in a Laser Mine along with your army to recapture the asteroid.
8. After the right area has been secured, we capture a few more high-production asteroids here.
9. Now we're about ready to invade one of the grey bases! With close to 200 seedlings and a Laser Mine, the battle for the grey asteroid raged on for days. Although we suffered heavy losses, in the end we managed to capture the giant asteroid with less than 50 seedlings left in the armada.
10. With the right side of the map secured, now the plan is to simply amass a large army and slowly expand to the left, wiping out any opposing force. Dividing our army into two groups, each around 150 strong, we march forward from both the top and the bottom.
11. Some random unexplored asteroids that we don't really care about at this point in time.
12. As we push for the final invasion of the last grey asteroid, the grey seedlings gathered their remaining forces and tried to take back their other asteroid base at the right side of the map, which has been left unprotected.
13. Good thing our southern army is still close by busy colonizing the left side of the map, so we send them back to protect the asteroid. Although the grey seedlings were strong, they were no match when faced with an army of 200+ seedlings, and so concludes the epic final battle of Eufloria's Story Mode.

Note I also posted the same thing on the Eufloria sub-section.

Anyways, go try the game out, it's a fun distraction while waiting for Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3.