Humble video game project gains worldwide commercial releaseRelax NewsFriday, 16 October 2009A simple, imaginative computer game called Eufloria that started life as an entrant in a 1-month video game making contest is now about to be turned into a commercially viable product available from October 20th via two of the most well-known online digital distributors.Eufloria was initially known as Dyson, a minimalistc idea inspired by the work of English theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson. TIGSource, a website for independent gaming enthusiasts, ran a game making competition in May 2008 in which Dyson won 2nd place.The two men behind the game, Alex May and Rudolf Kremers, worked on it in their spare time and set about producing expanded and improved versions, firstly for the prestigious 2009 Independent Games Festival Awards where it was nominated in two categories, and then for its pending worldwide release.Fans of a pre-release version have described the charming and unusual game as being something that's "initially baffling and then gets very good quite quickly". Players help seedlings to land on comets and eventually populate an asteroid belt, and Eufloria's success appears to lie in its combination of approachable gameplay, beautiful minimalism, and unexpected depth.Popular online distributors Steam and Direct2Drive are both offering a 25% discount off Eufloria's $/€14.95 price in the run-up to release. Meanwhile, for Freeman Dyson this is the second time he has inspired a computer game, after having the main character in the acclaimed Half-Life games named after him.
