Eufloria

Eufloria, the game formerly known as Dyson, is a single player real-time strategy game with a strong emphasis on "ambience" gameplay. According to the game's website:

Eufloria is an ambient game of space exploration and conquest that employs surprising themes of plant growth and bio mechanical evolution.

The game allows the player to explore a beautifully realized universe rendered in a style that is both unique and compelling. Eufloria's aesthetics are reminiscent of children's books like "the little prince" and the gameplay is supported by an original ambient soundtrack by Brian Grainger.

Eufloria was original a game created for TIGSource's Procedural Generation Competition by by Alex May, Rudolf Kremers, and Brian Grainger. At the time, the game was called Dyson. Although the game came in second (beaten by Rescue: The Beagles), development continued. The game was entered into the 2009 IGF, and was nominated for the grand prize (which later went to Blueberry Garden) as well as the D2D Vision Award (a sponsor-specific award). The game was renamed to Eufloria in 2009 in preparation for the full release.

The gameplay is based around the same concept found in Risk and Galcon. Thanks to the game's simple and intuitive control, everything can be done with the mouse. Players control seedlings that can be used to attack enemy seedlings and capture asteroids and plant trees, which in turn grow more seedlings for further conquest. In a regular game, the player usually competes against multiple opponents in a race to capture each other's asteroids or defeating all opposing seedlings.

Simple, eh? Throw in different types of seedlings, trees, enhancements, asteroid attributes, and multiple gameplay modes, and out comes a fairly complex game that can keep fans occupied for quite some time.

The Euflorium

According to the game's manual: "Eufloria takes place at an unspecified time and in an unknown universe. You are given control over creatures that live in an interstellar ecosystem and whose purpose seems to consist of maintaining or growing their living space through the exploitation of asteroid resources. Mining these asteroids makes them habitable to the mythical and long lost "Growers". Seedlings live a peaceful and productive life serving the Mother Tree and The Growers, but will this last forever?"

The game's story is fairly straight-forward. The player encounters grey seedlings which are infecting good seedlings, player fights back, finds out that other seedling "empires" are behind the grey infection, fights other seedlings. Finally, upon defeating the grey seedlings once and for all (?), the player finds out that the grey seedlings have the same genetic makeup as his or her own seedlings, meaning the grey seedlings are born from good seedlings... surprise?

Basic Game Concepts

Some basic game concepts, with many images taken straight from the game manual...

	Seedlings The basic unit, can be used to attack other seedlings, capture asteroids, and create more trees. Seedlings have three attributes, Energy facilitates capture and raises health, Strength enhances attack power, and Speed makes a seedling move and attack faster.
	Dyson Trees Dyson Trees are created with 10 seedlings. The older the tree, the stronger it is. Each asteroid has its own Energy, Strength, and Speed attribute, and Dyson Trees grown on that asteroid will spawn seedlings with the same attribute.
	Defense Trees The equivalent of a tower in any RTS game, produces explosives that attacks enemy seedlings.
	Flowers A special power-up that can be used either on Dyson Trees or Defense Trees. When used on Dyson Trees, Dyson trees become Enhanced Dyson Trees and grow more powerful seedlings. When used on Defense Trees, the Defense Tree will grow Laser Mines.
	Enhanced Seedlings Stronger and more capable than a regular seedling.
	Laser Mine Super slow, but can be sent to other asteroids like a regular unit. Shoots lasers, very good at killing seedlings. When used right, can wipe out an entire asteroid. When it dies, it explodes and does damage to the surrounding enemies.

The Flow of Battle

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.

Lift Off!

[ Download the Demo ] - Windows-only
[ Buy the Game ] - Now go get it!
[ Dyson ] - The original game that was submitted to the TIGSource competition

Minimum System requirements
- Operating System: Microsoft® Windows® XP SP2; Windows Vista
- Graphics: Currently not compatible with Intel’s onboard integrated mobile graphics chipsets.
- Processor: 1 GHz
- Memory: 512 MB RAM
- Hard Disk Space: 100 MB

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