Strategy Game Eufloria Deliberately Slows Down The Pace [Review]

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Trees and seedlings. That's what it's all about.
Trees and seedlings. That's what it's all about.

Eufloria is an ingenious, engaging, addictive strategy game for iOS, with its own unique look and style. There’s much more to it than first meets the eye.

You play the role of a kind of space farmer. No, wait, it gets better. You’re in charge of flying seedlings – zoom in close and they look like tiny winged spaceships. With a couple of taps, you can send seedlings from one asteroid to another. Get enough of them together, and you can plant a tree, which in turn grows more seedlings.

So your seedlings are a resource that you have to manage. As your empire of asteroids grows, you’re rewarded with more seedlings. The more trees you plant, the further your empire can reach. Then there are the enemies: bad guy seeds who come along attacking your trees and generally messing stuff up. How to defeat them? Send in more seedling spaceships. You get the idea.

It sounds like strategic fighting-for-territory games (I’m thinking Strategery, one of my favorites), and there are similarities.

The game guides you gently through initial stages

But what’s different about Eufloria is the pace. Although it’s possible to speed things up, you can instead take things very, very slowly. Slower still, if you engage “relaxed” mode. Strategy is about thinking, after all, not about reflexes. Sometimes, you need time to think.

I found myself changing the speed of the game while I played. Sometimes I’d get things zipping along faster, particularly when I noticed I had the upper hand and winning a level was in clear sight. At other times, usually when the mysterious enemies came along and started killing my trees, I’d slow things down to give myself time to think before acting. I like this speed adjustment feature.

The more your empire expands, the more complicated things become

Eufloria isn’t like most games. Learning how to play takes a considerable investment of time, stretched over a number of levels. Each of the early levels introduces a new idea or a new feature, and you need to concentrate a little to absorb it all. Eufloria challenges your brain a little more than, say, Carmageddon.

It’s addictive, too. The challenges gradually get tougher, but the slow pace of change pulls you forwards through the levels. I did think, at first glance, that it might be too repetitive – but instead I found myself hooked. Worth three dollars? Totally. But it won’t suit everyone: don’t buy if you’re naturally impatient.

Source: App Store

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