Go forth my seedlings (?!?) and conquer!!!

So after the abysmal game that was 'Amy' I decided to move on to something better and more colorful. To that end I've been playing a bit of 'Eufloria' another Playstation Network (PSN) title. The premise of this game is that you're a...something...OK so I haven't finished the game yet and as far as I can tell the player is simply some sort of seedling overlord. Yup, seedlings. Your job is, starting from your home asteroid, to colonize other asteroids. Along the way you'll run into some evil/corrupted seedlings that you will need to do battle with. You can also, when you've got enough seedlings, make more trees grow on your asteroids which in turn will make the asteroid generate (rate unknown) more seedlings. That's about it. At the very least it's fairly relaxing. Like much older PSN game 'Flower' but with plant on plant violence. I guess.

Pictured: Plant on plant violence.

The main question I found myself asking...myself as I was playing was whether or not I was having fun. For the most part games like this are what I do to unwind after I get some practice or some matches in with the fighting game flavor of the month (this month: 'King of Fighters XIII'). In this context what I'm looking for is something relaxing with the aforementioned 'Flower' fitting the bill along with such games as 'Linger in Shadows', the first few levels of 'Outland', etc. In that sense 'Eufloria' would be mission accomplished. It's relaxing, features pretty colors and has nice music. That said it does have a few issues.

Since the growth/production/whatever of the seedlings is, as best as I can tell, a somewhat rate limited process the inclusion of a function to speed up time is much appreciated. It would have been even more appreciated if it did more than speed it up from painful crawl to sluggish. I'm not looking to rush though the game or even the individual levels but I also don't want to stare at the screen with nothing to do. In writing about this process I am reminded of 'Starcraft II' wherein you start off with your meager resources and a few units to harvest additional resources. Where that differs from 'Eufloria' is that once sufficient resources are gathered (if you're actually halfway competent at the game) you're never without something to do. Manage your units. Build more stuff. Attack things. Something. With 'Eufloria' it takes the same resource (seedling) to build the means with which to generate (I think) seedlings faster as it does to explore or attack/colonize. What this means is that extensive colonization or an unsuccessful attack can leave you with literally nothing to do for extended periods of time. And don't say “explore more” as that maps aren't so big as to make that task particularly fulfilling or daunting. In short there's too much downtime.

I didn't find this mechanic to be particularly useful.

The other main issue I had with the game was the tutorial or lack thereof. While I don't want my hand held through a game 'Eufloria' could stand to explain a bit better how to use new mechanics when they're introduced and why that mechanic is strategically useful to the player. As I mentioned I haven't yet finished the game but already this has become an issues wherein the last two levels in which new gameplay mechanics where introduced where beaten without ever having used the mechanic. That's not so good. A more in depth explanation of the how and the why would have been nice. While also dreaming of things that would have been nice I think that stylistically that 'Eufloria' would have benefited from a similar narrative style of tutorial as seen in 'Little Big Planet 2' which features Stephen Fry explaining the world around you and how it works. That's probably not going to happen but it would have been nice. See you all next week.