Eufloria Message Board

Xenon 2 meets Eufloria! Transcendence meets Flower! Errr… to be honest our new Eufloria game is hard to classify… Let me try again:

It’s a completely new game within the Eufloria Universe, in which you can evolve a single Seedling Ship in different ways. You can specialize by attribute, focusing on Speed, Strength, or Energy.

The Mother Tree has sent you to investigate a strange alien installation, filled with wondrous habitats and sectors. Your ultimate aim is to explore three large environments to discover ancient artifacts, with which you can power up your ship, find lost seedlings, and take over enemy seedling colonies.

Other seedlings have gone before you and as you find their diaries in old data canisters you learn more and more about the installation, yourself, and your role in this universe.

All your evolving ships have their own story arc, although that aspect is fairly unobtrusive. (But nice for people who like a bit of lore)

Gameplay

The game experience can be hard-core or casual or something in between, depending on your own choices. Eufloria Adventures lets you delve deeper and deeper into ever harder areas, but if you haven’t powered up enough you will run into trouble. If you prefer an easier ride you stay in the easier levels for longer periods, while if you crave a challenge you can dive in headfirst and see how long you can last. This is pretty similar to classic dungeon crawlers and roguelikes, but done with our own twist on things.

We also added a casual mode for people who prefer to just explore, and a roguelike mode for people who crave a BRUTALLY HARD experience. (Seriously, it’s hard)

Brian Grainger provided the music again, and Anthony Flack did some stunning art for the game. (It really does look lovely)

About those visuals

The levels are procedurally generated, and populated with procedural plants, trees, flowers, and strange creatures. Where Eufloria is zen and subdued, “Eufloria Adventures” is lush and splendiferous. The idea is that each new level discovery is a reward in its own right. A joy to explore and see the wondrous sights in this strange alien installation.

Whenever you conquer a new colony, beautiful random flowers shoot up and bloom. While you fly around the many levels strange plants grow in your path, giving you useful information on where you have been before, while making the levels look better and better.

Simple controls

We stuck with pure touch controls for now, as it seemed the best fit for all the PlayStation Mobile devices we need to support, and we wanted to keep the game accessible. There is something quite rewarding about having direct physical control as well. Touch your ship to bring up a hud, touch an ancient artifact to activate it, touch the screen and your ship flies to your finger. Simple but effective.

About the music

Brian Grainger (AKA Milieu) did such a good job on the Eufloria OST that we asked him back to provide beats and moods. This time he operates as “Coppice Halifax” for a trippy, dubby and more direct experience, but with plenty of relaxed ambient vibes too. Hope you like it. J

Let me know what you think in the comments below? I can answer any and all questions you have. Alternatively get in touch via our website: www.eufloria-game.com.

Hello friends! Eufloria HD is coming out on December 17th for PS Vita!

This makes me happy, indeed. As an indie game developer, I remain amazed at the journey this game is taking, and the superb response it gets from fans. And as a proud Vita owner, it’s fantastic to be able to announce this release.

Having launched a few different iterations of Eufloria over the years, I’ve come to appreciate that each one poses a new challenge. How do we adapt the controls? Does the game speed work nicely? Are the visuals “right?” Generally there are real problems to overcome before you can settle on a solution that’s right for everybody. Well, this Vita version is quite different, but in a very positive way. Here’s why…

Performance

Eufloria is a funny thing. It may be “just” 2D, but you end up controlling thousands of seedlings across dozens of asteroids, zooming in to the level of individual blades of grass, or zooming out to see a bird’s eye view of an entire asteroid belt — all within the space of seconds.

This works really well, and is very pretty, but admittedly can be a bit of a strain on the game’s framerate. As a result, we’ve often tried to lock the framerate to 30 frames per second, and this is a pretty good compromise for most levels. On Vita, however, we found that with we could push things much harder. As a result, Eufloria HD runs at 60 frames per second in almost all circumstances. NICE!

Controls

Not only does this performance increase make the levels much smoother, it makes the controls super responsive. More so than I anticipated. The superfast update we get from running at 60 frames per second, combined with the Vita touch screen, makes for a very immediate and tactile experience. It’s a different feel from the PS3 version.

Eufloria HD offers dedicated and refined touch controls, which support a broad range of play styles. Because we allow the player to play at three speed settings, it’s possible to luxuriate (yes, it’s a word) in Eufloria’s ambient mood, strategize nicely at double speed, and really go for it at triple speed. And it all feels natural.

I actually had to get used to how quick and easy it was to control the game (and I know it pretty well). Panning and zooming is insanely crisp, and when you speed the game up (a nice feature anyway), you don’t lose any control at all. The screen is sensitive enough to deal with the responsiveness, but not so sensitive that it becomes fiddly. It becomes second nature.

Visuals

Eufloria HD has (rightfully, in my opinion) received a lot of praise for it procedural visuals. Alex May created a look that took inspiration from Japanese art, watercolours, and nature. That’s what’s cool about indie games — you can do whatever you feel is right for your game.

We have also integrated the play mechanics in the visuals, so the entire look of Eufloria HD is designed to deliver vital gameplay information through visual cues. You can “read” the game very well, after spending some time with it.

Ironically, Vita’s excellent screen worried me a bit. Because of its super-high pixel density (bear with me), the visuals could be very sharp, which could alter the overall feel of what we originally achieved. In reality it’s given us the best of both worlds. The almost hazy and zen-like quality of the visuals is intact, but a new clarity is added in places as well. You can easily see the small details on the game’s inhabitants, enhancing Eufloria’s readability. I like this a lot.

Vita Loves Eufloria HD!

This port was developed by Titanium Studios, and they did a wonderful job. The lovely surprise for me, without detracting from Titanium’s achievement, is how well it all gels on this hardware. Great port meets great platform.

I’m a lifelong gamer, and remain a huge fan of all kinds of different devices. But I must say that I’ve fallen in love with Vita. This means I’m pretty excited that we can add to its gaming ecosystem with the newest (and in my opinion, best) iteration of Eufloria HD. Vita is already a home to some amazing indie games, and I hope that people will appreciate Eufloria HD in a similar light. I’m playing through it again myself, and despite my knowledge of the game (I did design it, after all) it feels fresh and immersive. Hopefully you feel the same.

Let me know what you think in the comments below! I can answer any and all questions you have. Alternatively, get in touch via our website.

#playthis Eufloria HD is a brutal game. Oh sure, it looks to be all pastels and flowers, but beneath its groovy new-wave art-style and bloopy, soothing soundtrack lies a game about life-or-death survival. A very fun game about life-or-death survival, as it turns out. More »

You may have played indie gem Eufloria since its release on PSN, but you may only recognize it by it's common name, "That Calming Game That Makes Me Feel Funny For Some Reason." Now you'll be able to play TCGTMMFFFSR on iPad, with the release of Eufloria HD in February.

Eufloria HD offers an innovative approach to the strategy genre, layering RTS action with a soothing, nurturing interface that resembles something that happens on a cellular level, usually in a bedroom, a sterile doctor's office or the back seat of a 1987 Buick Electra. The iPad version will include the updates in the PSN release, along with a few touchpad-specific features -- if you know what we mean.

Ryan and Patrick take some chill pills and zone out with this vaguely horticultural PSN title.

The games industry is often known for its bluster. Its explosions, its gruesome headshots, its eerily realistic prostitutes. Less well known is the games industry's quiet, thoughtful nephew who, instead of getting drunk and grabby at Thanksgiving, crawls under the table to finish the 1000-piece puzzle he's been working on. That nephew is the independent games community.

Sony has done right by indie games, giving them an outlet on PSN, taking big risks with artsy titles like Flower and PixelJunk Eden. The publisher's latest indie outreach is Eufloria, another quiet, subtle game that blends elements of RPGs, space exploration, and RTS games with soothing visuals and a stellar ambient soundtrack.

We’re excited to announce a new program called “Only On PSN,” which features brand new games that are exclusively available on PlayStation Network throughout October. Every week starting tomorrow, October 4, you will find new titles, unique to PSN that are part of this program – games that you’ve likely read about here on the PlayStation Blog, or seen during our showing at E3 2011. You may recall our announcement a few months ago about investing $20 million in exclusive PSN titles, and the Only On PlayStation Network program showcases two titles spawning from this investment: Eufloria and Okabu.

We can’t wait for you to get your hands on the Only On PSN games yourselves, so we’re giving you a few special offers throughout the course of the program. First, to sweeten the deal, we’ll be offering PlayStation Plus subscribers a 20% discount on each game during the first week of its availability.

Additionally, users who spend $60 or more out of their PlayStation Network/Sony Entertainment Network wallet through the month of October will get $10 back in November. This includes any of the Only On PSN games, purchases of games, add-ons, movies and TV shows in both the game and video sections of the PlayStation Store, your paid subscriptions for PlayStation Plus or Music Unlimited, movie rentals or purchases through Video Unlimited and any games or virtual items you buy in PlayStation Home.

Be sure to keep an eye on the PlayStation Twitter feed, as we’ll be giving away download codes for each game in the line-up every week. Don’t miss your chance to get this week’s Only On PSN games for free!

Now, let’s check out the games:

October 4:

• Eufloria – An addictive ambient game of space exploration and conquest, plant growth and bio-mechanical evolution. Explore a beautifully realized universe rendered in a style that is unique and compelling. Conquer asteroids in deep space and use their resources to literally grow and nurture semi-organic plants and creatures to do your bidding.
• Rochard – A fun and original space adventure game that features a resourceful hero, ominous villains, rugged machinery, big explosions, even bigger stunts and sharp one-liners. The game tests players’ coordination and wits as they use gravity to their advantage, changing it at will to solve environmental puzzles and advance through each level.

October 11:

• Sideway: New York – Help defeat Spray, a sinister tagger who wants to dominate both Sideway and the real world in this unique sidescroller that offers you the chance to leave your mark on the city.

October 13:

• Sodium Collection – A more than $35 value available for $9.99, this PlayStation Home value pack includes the SodiumOne Pilot’s Jacket, which unlocks the full 50-level tank combat Salt Shooter game, and weapon upgrades for your SodiumOne tank. Also included is a variety of upgrades for Sodium 2: Project Velocity, a high-speed, free-to-play, futuristic multiplayer racing game exclusive to PlayStation Home, and the wildly-popular Blaster’s Paradise personal space, which hosts a tabletop version of Salt Shooter. Buy from the PlayStation Store and play in PlayStation Home.

October 18:

• Okabu – An action-puzzler, where players will guide Kumulo, Nimbe and four cloud-flying heroes as they battle to save their people and their world from the industrialized threat of the Doza. Dive into a hyper-tactile toybox world filled with a huge number of puzzles, playthings, adorable creatures and devious machines spread across an epic co-op campaign.
• RocketBirds: Hardboiled Chicken – Annihilate an evil penguin regime in this cinematic platform adventure game offering full solo and co-op campaigns with stereoscopic 3D support. Destroy enemies with a slew of weapons and illuminate the secrets to his past while uncovering the real enemies of Albatropolis.

October 25:

• inFAMOUS: Festival of Blood – Vampires swarm New Marais, and revered superhero Cole MacGrath has been bitten. To save his soul and city, he has just one night to find and kill the head vampire. Featuring hours of new gameplay, themed environment settings and new characters/enemies, Festival of Blood explores the darker side of the inFAMOUS universe.
• PixelJunk Sidescroller – Q-Games goes old-school with a completely retro side-scrolling shooter that reinvents the genre from the ground up while maintaining that nostalgic feeling. Dodge flurries of alien bullets and strategically upgrade weapons while battling through sweeping stages full of hazardous fluid and endless shooting mayhem.

Also starting tomorrow as part of Only On PSN, we’ll also be offering a selection of rare classic games in the PlayStation Store: God Hand, GrimGrimoire, Maximo: Ghosts to Glory, Odin Sphere and Ring of Red.

So head into the PlayStation Store tomorrow afternoon to check out Eufloria and Okabu, and don’t forget: If you’re a PlayStation Plus subscriber, be sure to take advantage of the 20% discounts for the new games each week before we move onto the next week of Only On PSN titles. We hope you enjoy the month of October gaming with these exclusive titles on PSN!

Sometimes you hear about a new game coming out and the concept behind it sounds like something plucked from your wildest dreams. It's as if the lead designer was a fly on your wall one night when you were carrying on with your friends about how cool it would be if "some company made a game where you blah blah blah with the XYZ..." Even if it isn't perfect, you do, on some level enjoy it...

Rochard involves a bit of platforming, but it's mostly about manipulating objects with gravity.

Xbox Live Arcade is hardly a perfect ecosystem, but the company's made its annual summer promotion one of the places to be for developers. It doesn't ensure success--but it helps.

Sony hasn't committed to a similar push for PlayStation Network releases, despite having its own exhaustive slate of exclusive content. Sony's looking to turn that around with "Only on PlayStation Network."

The promotion kicks off October 4, starting with the atmospheric Eufloria and physics-based platformer Rochard, which Brad and I already took a (quick) look at. "Only on PlayStation Network" continues through the rest of October, sometimes with one new release, other times with two.

Some long requested classics are going digital this month, too. God Hand, GrimGrimoire, Maximo: Ghosts to Glory, Odin Sphere and Ring of Red will all be available starting tomorrow.

As a bonus, anyone with a PlayStation Plus account receives 20% off each game, and if you spend $60 on PSN (games, movies, music, whatever), Sony will give you $10 to also spend on PSN.

The full list of games coming this month is as follows:

• Eufloria (October 4)
• Rochard (October 4)
• Sideway: New York (October 11)
• Sodium Collection (October 13)
• Okabu (October 18)
• RocketBirds (October 18)
• inFAMOUS 2: Festival of Blood (October 25)
• PixelJunk Sidescroller (October 25)

It's worth noting inFamous 2: Festival of Blood doesn't actually require you to own inFamous 2, a welcomed change of pace.

Eufloria, a floral asteroid ambient strategy game, is set to release October 4 on PSN for $9.99. If you find this description of the game is confusing, watch the following trailer. If you think the following trailer makes Eufloria look like an artificial-insemination strategy game, you'd be right.

The PlayStation Network has received a lot of support recently from the Pub Fund, a Sony-directed operation aimed at supplying smaller independent developers with much-needed money to get their projects off the ground and onto the PSN. And the PlayStation Blog has news about the release date and pricing of one such game coming very soon...

Salutations! I know it’s been a while since we last spoke, but the Pub Fund group at SCEA has been hard at work on bringing interesting, exclusive content to PSN. Okabu, Papo & Yo, and more clandestine projects are still on the horizon, but today I’m here to drop the launch details for Eufloria – a very different, very special sort of strategy game.

It’s tough to distill the concept down to a couple of sentences without doing the experience a huge injustice, but this excellent trailer should give you an idea of the mood and visual direction:

Now take that ethereal aesthetic, and the tingling that you’re feeling in your temples, and fold a layer of smartly accessible strategy elements over it. You’ll be exploring, conquering and colonizing enemy asteroids without the need for messy tech trees or arcane controls. It’s a rare game that satisfies both ends of the art game/strategy game spectrum, but I think that Eufloria nails it. It’s also tunable in either direction – play on the less hectic Chilled mode to revel in the ambiance, or give Dark Matter mode a try to grit your tactical teeth.

Check out my previous post for more game details and a list of some of the huge improvements for the PS3 iteration, and be sure to leave a spot for it in your PSN library if the concept intrigues you. Eufloria will be launching October 4th for $9.99, with a trial and unlock so that everyone can give it a shot. Supporting interesting independently developed games is an important goal for us, especially amongst all the blockbuster behemoths this fall – we love bringing you this stuff, and want to do so all year round. With that said, I hope we’ll see you in a few weeks!

(P.S. The little looping song that plays on the XMB before you launch the game has served as my background music for tens of hours of work throughout the year – as you can imagine, the full soundtrack is absolutely stunning.)

We continually strive to make PlayStation Network the most innovative console game and entertainment service and that’s why we’re thrilled to announce a three-year, $20 million dollar investment plan to develop PSN exclusive games. Our line of PSN exclusives has had great success with titles such as Joe Danger, Critter Crunch, Flower and the PixelJunk series, and we’re excited to add new and different game experiences to this portfolio of games that can’t be found on any other game console. This investment includes support across both our own network of first-party studios as well as for the Pub Fund, which was first introduced at GDC in 2009.

So what does this mean for you as a gamer? It means more unique, fun, innovative, edgy and higher quality game experiences on PSN that you won’t find anywhere else! We are excited for the upcoming PSN exclusive titles that are part of this three-year plan, including Eufloria, Okabu, and Papo & Yo, which recently received several accolades at E3, including Best Puzzle Game by both IGN and GamePro. Under this investment, we’re committed to delivering titles that have innovative gameplay mechanics, vibrant visuals, interesting storylines and an artistic element to interactive entertainment that can only be found on PlayStation Network.

Stay tuned to the PlayStation Blog for more exciting announcements around the PSN exclusive games portfolio soon!

Seeds scatter, floating across space so they can invade a nearby asteroid. Meanwhile more seeds drift towards yet undiscovered lands, all the name of aggressive empire building. This is Eufloria, a PSN adaptation of a PC strategy game originally called Dyson. In Eufloria's campaign you'll have m...

Sony's Pub Fund project, which provides support to bring independently developed titles to the PSN without the help of a traditional publisher, has announced its next big release: Omni Systems' IGF-nominated artsy strategy title, Eufloria. The title has had its awfully vague 2011 launch window on PSN tightened up to a somewhat less vague "latter half of June," when it will hit the PlayStation Store for $9.99.

The game, which sees players inhabiting procedurally generated asteroid fields with spores in a strategic attempt to ... well, inhabit all the asteroids, is a port of the PC title of the same name. This time around, however, the game will have extra content, enhanced graphics, an extended soundtrack and improved AI -- all at about half of the game's PC price. To quote our favorite collegiate economics professor: "More stuff for less money? That's always a totally rad deal." (He wasn't very good at his job.)

Omni Systems' beautiful indie game Eufloria, once known as Dyson, will be released on the PlayStation Network (presumably for PS3) sometime in 2011. Eufloria is a strategy game of sorts, in which players grow "semi-organic" trees on asteroids, and then set those trees against AI opponents, all presented in a minimal visual style that the game's website calls "reminiscent of children's books like The Little Prince."

The PSN release will benefit from updated visuals, unspecified new mechanics and other new material. New tracks from original composer Brian Grainger will also be added to the game. "Considering the various improvements," Omni Systems says in the press release, "it may be more accurate to describe the PSN release as 'Eufloria++'."

If you'd like to get an idea of what the current Eufloria is like, a demo of the PC version is available.

[Via GameSetWatch]

Grow semi-organic plants to do your bidding.