I recently had a chance to play Brian Wilbur’s orb-bursting chain reaction Xbox Live Indie Game Euphorium.

I was afforded the opportunity because Brian himself made it a point to share the news of his game’s release with Reddit’s Indie Gaming community, prompting me to reach out with niceties, prompting him to respond with said niceties, and the rest is history. Ah, the indie scene at its best.

I sat down and played through his $1 chain reaction title, here are some thoughts.

Gameplay

In Euphorium, the name of the game is to keep it going. The concept is really simple and that’s one of the reasons why it worked for me, you pick an area to start an explosion, as orbs are caught in your blast, they too explode prompting any orbs in their area to do the same with the goal to destroy some, all, an exact amount or none of the orbs depending on the level. You play through different levels using altered versions of the chain reaction concept to achieve that particular level’s goal. Some levels your explosion radius is huge, others its no bigger than the size of the orbs your trying to destroy.

One option that would have been a welcome addition would be a suicide button for when you know you messed up or passed your target. On a few levels your objective is to get a very low number of orbs destroyed, achieved by having your explosion avoid high density areas and a little luck. The problem is, a lot of times I’d miss the goal and have to sit and watch the now pointless chain reaction process run its course before I had to try again. It wasn’t a huge nuisance but once you got up to the higher levels that required more restarts, it definitely stuck out.

The lack of control after the explosions began had me wondering why the gamplay mechanic had to stop there. At times it had me wishing you had something to do after the chain reaction starts, instead of just finding exactly where you want your explosion to be, and timing it right. Some cool gameplay mechanics like slowing/pausing a reaction or a power-up system would be where I’d like to see the game go if it ever was developed further.

That said, 70 levels of the same simple mechanic and I never got bored, a tribute to how the concept and objective adjustments were frequent enough to keep me playing.

Style

The game’s style definitely fits the $1 look, a sea of rainbow colored orbs in front of a standard black backdrop. The music is great and fits right in with the game type, and everything looked and ran real smooth, something I can’t and won’t say about every XBLIG I’ve had my hands on.

Story

No story, just explosions!

Everything Else

A benefit that isn’t granted to Xbox Live Indie’s are those oh so addicting achievements, Wilbur worked around this by adding built in medals for the game, also including a stats page for your play including total time played and total orbs destroyed. You really got the sense that the developer understood what he wanted to bring to the game and all the little things included really add to the value of it.

Euphorium is available to download now for 80 MS Points ($1) via the Xbox Live Marketplace, and with 70 levels total, it definitely beats the price of admission.

[DIYgamer obtained a free copy of the game for review purposes. This in no way affected the outcome of the review.]