Eufloria began life as Dyson, a real-time strategy game from British studio Omni Systems Limited. The name comes from the physicist Freeman Dyson’s hypothesis that a tree-like plant could grow on a comet. That idea is the whole game: you grow trees on asteroids, and the trees grow soldiers.
Trailer, via Rudolf Kremers.
Three Developers and a Comet Tree
Omni Systems is three independent developers — Alex May, Rudolf Kremers and Brian Grainger — and Eufloria is their game about interstellar lifeforms called Euflorians. You command them. They live on asteroids and take their resources from asteroids. The player plants Dyson trees, and the trees drop leaves that become seedlings. Seedlings are your only basic unit: they build, they fight, they die.
The art is minimal. The color of your empire is customizable. Each tree’s branches grow on a fractal algorithm, so no two trees look alike. That is the trick the game pulls off — a strategy map that reads as a garden.
Seedlings, Flowers, Lasermines
The loop is plain. Ten seedlings in orbit of an asteroid can be sent into the ground to grow grass and roots, which starts a new tree. A defense tree attacks invading seedlings with explosive fruit, and its health, damage and spawn rate climb over time.
- Speed raises how fast seedlings move
- Strength raises their damage
- Energy raises how fast they convert an enemy asteroid
Those three stats also change how a seedling looks. Add a flower to a Dyson tree and you get dysons with far better firerate and range. Add one to a defense tree and you get lasermines — seedlings with multiple lasers and a suicidal explosion. To take an asteroid, seedlings burrow through the roots to the core and sap its energy.
The Greys and the Mothertree
The story opens in deep space. The mothertree wants enough colonies for the growers, mythical beings who spawned the seedlings, hoping the growers will return. Then the player meets the greys, who have brutally attacked a colony. The greys, it turns out, were driven mad by a disease that forces them to attack.
Another empire is attacking too, so the player is sent beyond the border to learn why the greys are attacking and to deal with them. New technologies and rescued allies follow. The enemies produced the greys, despite the risk the greys would destroy them as well.
A Random Map Every Time
Levels are partially randomly generated, so each playthrough differs. Every asteroid has its own size and values, and produces seedlings with different stats. That is the replay value, and it is real, though it is also the limit of it: the game is a slow, ambient thing, and the randomness keeps you in the same loop rather than opening new ones.
Eufloria is not a fast RTS. It is a game about watching a tree get stronger. The minimalist graphics and the fractal branches make the waiting pleasant, which is rare in this genre.
A Dyson Tree on a BlackBerry
- Released for Microsoft Windows in 2009
- PlayStation Network in 2011
- iPad in 2012
- Mac, Linux and Android pre-released with Humble Indie Bundle for Android 4 on 8 November 2012
- Eufloria HD on Google Play on 15 December 2012
- BlackBerry PlayBook on 29 December 2012
- Nintendo Switch on 31 December 2021
- IGDB critic aggregate: 7.8/10 from 6 outlets
The Ending the Greys Deserved
The plot’s final turn is the good one. After the greys’ home asteroid is conquered, the mothertree analyses their remains and finds that every enemy seedling carried the same DNA as the Euflorian seedlings. That is a clean, cold ending for a game that otherwise asks you to tend a garden.
The weakness is the middle. Rescuing allies and gaining technologies moves the story, but the moment-to-moment play stays the same from the first asteroid to the last. The flowers and lasermines add range and firepower, not new decisions.
What holds up is the concept. A comet tree, fractal branches, and a war fought by leaves is a stranger and better idea than most strategy games manage, and Omni Systems built it with three people. The BlackBerry PlayBook version arrived on 29 December 2012, four days after Eufloria HD hit Google Play, and the game has since reached the Nintendo Switch. It has outlasted nearly every platform it shipped on.
Eufloria is worth your time if you want a strategy game that moves at the speed of growth. It is not worth your time if you want one that moves at the speed of war.
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