First off is Eufloria's graphics and sound, and they haven't changed much. The graphics are still simple and clean, and the sound is still peaceful and resonant. The biggest change is in the animations and the trees, which are not much more fluid and plant-like, making the game more interesting when zoomed in all the way than it was before. The graphics in the alternate Dark Matter mode also play off of this, although it makes the game much more dark and contrasting than the normal mode. The sounds never rise to anything above a peaceful ambiance no matter the mode, which further reinforces the calmness of Eufloria.

On the surface, Eufloria is much like a strategy game. You have asteroids which are procedurally generated to have a certain balance of three attributes: speed, power, and energy. These attributes roughly correspond with speed, attack, and health on your seedlings. In order to begin production, you must use 10 seedlings on an empty asteroid to plant a tree, which will sprout and grow more seedlings. The larger the asteroid, the more trees to can plant and the more seedlings you will produce there. Attacking is as simple as moving from asteroid to asteroid, with any hostile seedlings or trees being attacked by your expeditionary force until one or the other is destroyed or retreats.

Unlike most strategy games, there is no fog of war, and no resources beyond your seedlings. There are, however, several additions to the Eufloria units that make sense. In previous titles, there were only seedlings and defense bombs. Now there are flowers and stations. Flowers act as an enhancer for whatever asteroid you decide to plant them on. They can either make your dyson trees grow seedlings faster or make your defense trees grow bombs and launch them faster. The station is the single strongest unit in the game, and requires massive armies to take out. It orbits around whatever planet it is assigned to, and automatically attacks any enemy seedlings in range with four extremely powerful lasers. Most seedlings are destroyed in less than a second, which just shows how powerful the station is. These units appear at random intervals.

Another cool addition to Eufloria is the capturing of enemy trees. In past versions, all trees had to be eliminated before you could capture an asteroid, and then you had to rebuild. Now only one tree has to be eliminated, and if you capture the asteroid before your forces are destroyed, you gain control of everything on the asteroid itself. It's a much needed, and much appreciated, change from the previous version. This capturing also extends to bonus units such as flowers as well, which makes taking certain asteroids very important., as you can gain a very lucrative seedling factory simply by taking one with a lot of flowers.

The one major problem that Dyson had, which is the same problem that Eufloria has, is that the asteroid composition matters little in the long run. In the early game, a good asteroid can speed up your conquering of asteroids and allow you to expand faster, but when you start to get serious about conquering enemy territory, you no longer care about the composition of your forces. It becomes a matter of swarm tactics, and while that's certainly the focus of the game - it is beautiful to watch your seedlings swarm around a target, after all - it really loses the strategy element that the game wishes to portray with the various attributes. A stronger effect, or even a reduction of possible force sizes, would do wonders to make it feel more like a strategy game. As is, there's little reason to send anything besides your largest amount of seedlings into any situation, including recon.

The new game modes to Eufloria really add a lot of depth and replayability that was not originally there. There are three modes: campaign, skirmish, and dark matter. Campaign and Dark Matter are very similar, with Dark Matter playing much like an "unfair" campaign, with a much smarter AI and unbalanced starting conditions. Still, the AI is not all that intelligent, even in Dark Matter mode, when they are supposed to be way harder. The normal game itself can be beaten with ease. A nifty little feature is the ability to unlock all modes from the start, rather than playing through and unlocking them gradually. If gradually is your thing, though, you can play that way as well.

Eufloria plays much more like a puzzle or action title than a strategy one, and the way it presents itself emphasizes this slow, serene gameplay pace. You will never find yourself scrambling to resist the advances of an enemy, but rather sitting and watching your seedlings grow and flit by peacefully. Taking an asteroid is never a feat of macro- or micro-management, but rather conquering through overwhelming force. It's less about your force composition and more about where you are moving to and finding the best path through a route of randomly generated asteroids.

The end result of all of this is a stellar title that is great to sit down and calm oneself to. There's no adrenaline present here, just peaceful zen, and it is a far departure from your standard strategy game. While this may sound bad, it's actually a breath of fresh air and a stellar title to boot, thanks to minimalist graphics and sound, procedurally generated maps, and several excellent game modes. It manages to build on the backs of previous releases in such a way that doesn't undermine its grassroots start, and is one of the best games, indie or otherwise, this year.