Available for download on Steam, Eufloria is a real-time strategy (RTS) game that takes sleek, minimalist design, simple-but-taxing gameplay and soothing audio to make an altogether more artistic gaming experience.  Based on the theory that tree-like plants would be able to grow on comets, the concept is a pretty simple one of building your empire of seedlings on different asteroids, represented by circles.

You can plant different trees which either help increase your numbers or fire exploding seedlings that really aid you in the fight against enemy seedlings.  Battles are fairly simple, you just amass the most seedlings you can and send them onto an enemy-held asteroid.  That's not terribly strategic, but over time you learn that different asteroids give rise to different seedlings with different stats.  There are three to worry about: energy, strength and speed.  On top of that, you've got to be concerned with how many seedlings an asteroid can produce before stopping, which generally means shipping seedlings of a certain kind to another asteroid in order to allow for more seedlings to be produced on the first asteroid.  In short: this game takes patience.  And oodles of it.

While others that are less kind would call this game dull, for me, it's a nice little game that I can play while I'm writing here or doing other things because the premise is so simple and there are no real moments where you have to concentrate on it for half an hour at a time, say, but really because of that, I don't think I'll be coming back to it terribly often.  The art style and the soundtrack both endear me greatly to the game, but it is just so minimal that it makes me realise I need more engaging details, more texture and depth to a game.  Eufloria is certainly beautiful and I'm not much of an RTS player, so while I'd be happy to have this game as a screensaver for my PC, I can definitely see that others will give up a great deal of time to this game, with its gentle learning curve, soothing sounds, pastel colours and general all-round mildness.