Ok, so there’s this physicist called Freeman Dyson, and he believes that you could theoretically place a genetically engineered plant onto an asteroid which would then grow and create an environment breathable to humans.

This prompted Alex May and his team to create a game called Dyson for a competition, and that freeware title eventually became Eufloria.

But how do you create a game out of a scientific theory? Eufloria is all about the plants. All human elements have been removed from Freeman Dyson’s original idea and the plants have grown sentient and more than a little territorial. The game is about controlling and conquering other plant ‘empires’ by controlling asteroids.

Not to be confused with the vacuum cleaners

To break down the game to its absolute core mechanic, Eufloria is a real time strategy experiment. Instead of having multiple different units under your control, everything revolves around a single unit type - the games ubiquitous seedlings.

Depending on the asteroid they were ‘grown’ on, these Seedlings have a different set of attributes. Strong seedlings are great at attacking enemy defences, high energy seedlings can capture asteroids and fast seedlings are useful for quick decisions or defensive moves.

Each asteroid can house a limited number of trees which can provide defensive abilities, or grow new seedlings. To build these trees, seedlings have to ‘plant’ themselves into the asteroid, so your only form of attack is also your only economic resource.

The game leads you through a series of single player story missions which can then be played through again on harder difficulty once completed. There are also skirmish maps available for people that want to jump right into the action.

Patience is a virtue

Eufloria might be all about combat and strategy, but it’s difficult to describe it as an action game. Many of the games missions rely on having a certain number of seedlings which take time to grow, and establishing new Dyson trees means having to wait even longer before your army can get up to size.

With only a single resource and a single asteroid to start out with, the first part of every mission is a test of patience. Rush in too early and you’ll only have to start rebuilding your army again. Wait for a fifteen minutes and you’re likely to achieve a quick victory.

A lack of difficulty and incredibly slow pacing lets the story mode down. What could have been an incredibly sharp experience in 15 levels becomes a slog at 25. Introduction of new strategy and concepts simply isn’t frequent enough while the AI doesn’t even start to really attack until about half way through.

Hard Mode

The game’s remedy for this is the ‘Dark Matter’ mode, which ramps the difficulty up and makes the enemy AI something to fear rather than pity. You have to complete the story mode to ‘officially’ unlock it, but luckily you can also unlock the mode via the menu system without feeling like too much of a cheat.

Once you’re finally presented with a challenge and all the tools to fight against the other empires, the game becomes engaging and addictive as you try to capture new asteroids and endlessly expand while holding on to those you’ve already conquered.

The interface is as minimal as the game itself and never gets in the way. Everything is controlled via dragging the mouse from one asteroid to another, while selecting units with different attributes can be achieved by double clicking on an asteroid.

The only flaw in the strategy that I found was that even at higher levels of difficulty the seedling attributes become unimportant and the old fashioned RTS rush strategy – were you amass a massive group of units at just charge and your opponent - was hands down the best way to achieve victory.

Simple gameplay and simple interface aside, there’s little excuse from the actual strategy to be quite so basic.

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