Eufloria

I got Eufloria as part of the Indie Royale Really Big Bundle last week.  It’s a beautiful, ambient game, with soft pastel colours and gentle music.. all rather soothing 🙂

The controls are very simple with everything handled by clicking and dragging.  After learning how to grow trees, produce more seedlings and expand, you come across the first inhabited asteroid..

The grey seedlings fought mine as they arrived, but weren’t able to stop me taking over their asteroid.  The greys turned out to be a spreading disease.. making it all ok to go and destroy them 😉

The next levels introduced asteroids protected with Defence Trees, which were much harder to defeat!

I initially had trouble with this level as the randomly generated asteroids appeared to have blocked me in, and I was unable to attack with the seedlings I had!  I tried leaving the game running for a long time while I did other things, and the game built up hundreds of seedlings.. which still weren’t enough to win.

A friend said he had completed the level with around 500 seedlings.. but getting that many would take a lot of idling, and I realised it couldn’t possibly be the intended strategy!  I restarted the level to see if I’d missed something.. and yes, I had..

It turned out that you were supposed to be able to move between undefended asteroids, while discovering, but not taking over, the defended ones.  On my first attempt, the random generation must have put the next uninhabited asteroid just out of range so that I didn’t spot it.

Later levels start to have slightly more proactive enemies.. not taking care meant they stole an asteroid for me while my seedlings were out fighting!  Sometimes, when there are two rival empires, they attack each other, leaving you time to build up and then pick off the weaker one 🙂

So far, I think the strategy in the game is rather light.. build a few defence trees, make sure you have seedlings at all asteroids on the edge of your empire, and that seems to be enough to hold the enemy back.  There’s also the “cheap” option of leaving the game running in the background to build up an overwhelming force.. but in my view that takes away the satisfaction.

Flowers are the next feature in the game.. I’ve not got far enough in to discover them yet.. but they can enable seedlings with more firepower and range, or add lasermines if placed on the defence trees.  I don’t think this is going to change the peaceful feeling I get from playing the game, though.. a peaceful explore and conquer game?  Whatever next? 🙂

The Humble Introversion Bundle

It’s time for another Humble Bundle, and this time it’s Introversion‘s games up gor grabs!

The main games in the bundle are hacking puzzle-game Uplink, strategy Darwinia and Multiwinia, a set of multiplayer game modes based on Darwinia.. and strategic thermonuclear wargame DEFCON!  For beating the current average price of the bundle, you can also grab Bit Blot‘s Aquaria, an underwater action-adventure, and Kloonigames‘ Crayon Physics Deluxe.. a physics-based puzzle game where you draw objects such as slides, weights and so on, to complete the objective on each level!

There are also a pair of bonus prototype tech demos: Subversion City Generator, which demonstrates the use of procedural generation by creating a complete city environment, and Voxel Tech Demo which explores destructible voxel buildings.

I already have Darwinia and Crayon Physics Deluxe, and again I find myself wishing I could gift the ‘spares’!

The Indie Royale – Difficult 2nd Bundle

The Indie Royale is another indie bundle scheme along the lines of The Humble Bundle..

This is the second in the series, containing action-puzzle game Night Sky by NICALiS, Red Redemption‘s strategy Fate of the World, space-shooter Scoregasm, by charliesgames, and a pair of games by Size Five Games: point and click comedy Ben There, Dan That! and sequel Time Gentlemen, Please!

The deal is not quite pay-what-you-want, as there is a minimum price, but it’s still a bunch of games for a low price, enough to attract decent numbers.  The price starts low, and goes up as people buy.. but if the minimum price is beaten, the price is knocked down again.  Recent price changes and other stats can be seen on the site too.. it’s rather interesting to see the price change over time.

Currently, the minimum is just over £2, which doesn’t sound much.. but in the six hours it’s been on sale, there have been over 11,500 sales.. 🙂

Dwarfs!?

Having a Dwarf-obsessed friend means that a game with a title like this one gets instant attention!  That’s not to say it didn’t deserve it though..

Dwarfs!? is an arcade/strategy game which puts you in the role of Overseer of a Dwarf colony, aiming to make as much gold as possible.  To actually get the gold, you have diggers, who head off randomly in search of loot, but rather like lemmings often end up getting themselves killed in water, lava, or being attacked by various enemies!  For defense, you have warriors, which can be trained up at outposts and fired out of a cannon towards bosses!

I downloaded the demo several weeks ago, but then failed to even launch it, with so many other games to play, and an attention span like that of a goldfish.  However, the game appeared on Steam for just £2, so it ended up in the collection anyway 😉

The tutorial is voiced by one of the Yoggscast guys.. I wasn’t too keen on the rather forced “Dwarf” voice he was putting on, though I’m sure his fans love it, and it is good to see a boost for an indie developer too!  The developer is Power of Two.. a two-man team, assistend and published by Tripwire Interactive 🙂

Dealing with water or lava caves requires a sacrifice in the form of one of your diggers blowing himself up to create a hole.  Fortunately, your base produces more diggers as time goes on, so you don’t run out.. and trapping either cave provides you a bonus.

Enemies are fought off by your warriors, with bosses confronted via the awesome Dwarf Cannon, which fires warriors!

Once out of the tutorial, there are a few game modes to try out.. in Arcade, you simply aim to gather as much gold as possible in a set time limit.  The dungeon is randomly generated, so you just have to hope the diggers hit a treasure cave  before a water or lava cave.. and by the end of a 15 minute game there are so many diggers wandering around it’s hard to keep track of them all!

Other game modes include Tower Defense gameplay, Rush Mode, with crazy spawning of diggers, Dark Mode, in which you can only see the tunnels your dwarfs have made.. no guiding them towards loot, then, as well as a series of Challenges.. and Leaderboards to compare with friends.. or if I were a Dwarf, to measure my beard against 😉

Majesty 2

Paradox Interactive’s strategy Majesty 2 is another game I saw a long while back, via demo, and like many other games, I decided to wait till a price drop before picking it up.  The Steam Summer Camp Sale provided the price drop in the form of the Paradox Fantasy Pack, and there we have it..

In Majesty 2, you are the last heir to the throne, and the last hope of the Kingdom.  King Leonard, who held the throne previously, wanted to make a name for himself and so summoned a fearsome demon, the Baron of Hell.. who promptly defeated the King and took the throne for himself.. 😉

Your first task is to learn how to play, aided by a narrator who sounds like a rather dodgy Sean Connery, and some very easy tasks.

Starting with just the castle, you create your town by picking buildings for your peasants to get to work on, starting with the marketplace, a tower or two for defense, and Hero Guilds, such as the Warrior’s Guild.

All you have to do is place the building where you want it, and the peasants do the rest..

Once you have completed a Heroes Guild you can then hire heroes, who you can then get to do your bidding via the setting of explore, attack and defend flags.  Well.. if you offer a reward, that is..

During the tutorial, my explorers seemed to wander the map freely, but after that they needed enticing with some reward money on the flags.  An easy task, such as exploring just into the fog of war, or defending a nearby building, seemed to only need 100 gold to attract interest from a hero, while missions further afield needed a larger reward to get any interest.

More difficult tasks require more heroes to take part, and also then need a larger reward.
I failed to get enough heroes to defend the trade caravan on my first attempt at the Engine of Commerce quest, as it started off further from town and had plenty of attackers on the way.

The game has an interesting economy.. spending more gold on rewards for tasks you want completed turns out to be a good thing.  Your heroes purchase goods and equipment from your Marketplace and Blacksmith with their reward money, and are therefore more effective on the next mission.. and the money then returns to your coffers via taxes!

Taxes are levied on every building; so as your town grows, your income grows too.  Caravans, which set off from Trading Posts, also bring you more gold, although they need to be protected on their journey as they attract attackers.

The tutorial continues through the first few missions, adding a few more building types and introducing more concepts.. there’s also a multiplayer mode, though as my usual gaming buddies don’t have this game, I might be leaving it alone for now.. till I think I can beat random opponents, anyway 😉