Eufloria and the Challenges of Zen Gaming

As games have become increasingly ubiquitous, they have naturally branched out to appeal to demographics that were previously ignored. One of these new—but rapidly expanding—markets consists of players who want games to provide an experience closer to meditation than escapism. Rather than taking out their frustrations in a night of deathmatches or horde mode, these gamers are more likely to chill out with titles like Flower or The Undergarden, that occupy your mind just enough that you can forget about the world and just zone out. While there's no agreed-upon label for this category, some have appropriately called it "zen" gaming.

Now I actually think that stress-reduction is a perfectly valid use for games, and have no problem with developers exploring low-engagement game designs. But they should realize that in doing so, they’re walking a fine line. Requiring too much of the player can kill the relaxed mood, but so can requiring too little. That was what I discovered while playing Eufloria, a PSN and PC release that takes its zen qualities to such an extreme that the best strategy for most levels is just to lay your controller down and go do something else for a while.

Eufloria is a minimalist take on the real time strategy genre, and it’s not without its charms. The art borrows from the botanical themes of another Zen game, PixelJunk Eden (your bases are trees, your units seedlings), and has a nice, organic feel despite being very simplified. Its off-kilter sound design is definitely the high point of the game, and really made me want to like it. But everything else about Eufloria pushed me away rather than encouraging me to lose myself. As an RTS game, it’s so simple that even calling it “entry level” is probably overselling it. Every map can be conquered using the same strategy: build up as many attacking units as you can, then send them out to conquer every point of contention.

Still, this takes a considerable amount of time. By default, seedlings are produced at an excruciatingly slow pace. There is a fast-forward option, which I kept perpetually activated, but even then the game moves so slowly that I had to find other things to do while waiting on units to be produced. The first time I played Eufloria, it literally put me to sleep. Subsequent attempts to trudge through it left me feeling frustrated, not because I wasn’t winning, but because so little was actually happening.

To head off one obvious criticism, let me say that I don’t share many long-time gamers’ fear of anything that could be called “casual”. I think Peggle and Dark Souls can exist in the same world, and even be enjoyed by the same people. That’s because at the most basic level what separates good games from bad ones is the ratio of reward to investment. Peggle offers excessive reward for relatively small achievements, which will either make you feel great about yourself, or give you a knowing chuckle. Dark Souls doesn’t offer a lot of in-game rewards, but one does feel a great sense of pride while overcoming its tremendous challenges.

Conversely, Eufloria asks very little of you, and gives you very little in return. Finishing a level opens up another, almost identical level which can usually be conquered using the exact same strategy as the last. It rewards investment and complete disinterest in more or less the same way. That’s a misunderstanding of what the best zen games, like Flower and PixelJunk Eden, are really about. Even though they encourage you to zone out while playing, that doesn’t mean they aren’t still rewarding engagement. It’s just that the rewards are more subtle, and may remain at a subconscious level until you stop and reflect on how the game world has been altered by your actions.

Zen games are still games at their core, even if they encourage a style of play that has been relatively untapped in the past. Gamers who are interested in them deserve quality experiences just as much as fans of more traditional genres. Eufloria isn't worth the zen gamer's time, despite looking like it might be on par with the best entries in its genre. However, it does at least provide developers with an important lesson. Making a game still requires full engagement even if the finished product doesn't demand the same from players.