Super Energy Apocalypse: RECYCLED

By: Derek Yu

On: March 1st, 2009

Super Energy Apocalypse: RECYCLED is the first title from the newly-formed Brain Juice Games. It’s an entertaining and polished strategy/tower defense game with a sustainable energy theme (its creator, Lars Doucet, took an internship at the Houston Advanced Research Center during its development). In the game you’ll tap various natural sources (wind, solar, coal, nuclear, etc.) to power your camps and protect them from zombies who invade during the night. But you have to be aware of the waste you create, which makes the zombies stronger – garbage trucks will need to haul away the trash to landfills and recycling centers.

Unfortunately, while the message is certainly worthwhile, it gets slightly lost in the post-apocalyptic narrative, in my opinion. From an educational standpoint, more real-life facts about the world’s energy consumption and its consequences would have been great. As it was, I was thinking more about killing zombie mutants than conservation while playing the game.

I also never felt like a developed a solid strategy. This is partly because the zombie assaults are so frantic – zombies of all types overrun the map pretty quickly. Visually, it’s hard to tell who’s attacking what, or how much damage anything is doing. And before you know it, it’s all over – the coming dawn destroys any zombies that are still left standing. Regarding the resources, I never saw any real downsides to using any of them (another reason why the conservation theme got sort of lost on me). Mind you, I was playing on “Super Normal” difficulty (the middle of three).

None of the aforementioned problems really prevented me from having fun with the game. As with most tower defense games, it’s enjoyable just to lay down weapons and watch things die. But I think more could have been done to develop the game’s strategy and overall theme (more educational games, please!).

TIGdb: Entry for Super Energy Apocalypse: RECYCLED

Posted in Browser Games, Social Impact, Strategy | Tags: BrainJuiceGames

barold

zombies!
http://www.brainjuicegames.com Lars Doucet

Hey, thanks for the review! I’m currently working on a sequel, working title, “Super Energy Metropolis.” What would you recommend I work on to make the economic aspects more clear? I wanted to make the zombies the motivation to run an efficient economy, but I guess that got a little lost. Any ideas?
Monster King Ren

Zombie lawyers.
lesslucid

Despite the flaws mentioned above, I think this game does a great job in illustrating the problems inherent in trying to switch to more energy-efficient fuels. Coal and oil powered based are cheaper and faster to get up and running, and when you’re operating within tight constraints, that’s important, because if you’re halfway through building a perfectly carbon-neutral base and the zombies come and you don’t have any defences up yet… you’re stuffed. On the other hand, if you just ignore the pollution that comes from burning coal with blithe abandon, then in the long run, you’re even more stuffed, because the zombies feed on that pollution. The game even models things like the problem with needing baseload power – if your solar panels haven’t generated enough electricity in the day, then fighting off the zombies at night becomes a big problem – or if you use windmills, then the amount of energy available to you fluctuates with the wind strength.

For the metropolis game, I reckon what I’d do is try to model similar problems in relation to the kind of social unrest that holds back development in developing countries. Some sort of balancing act between education levels (more scientific expertise available but also higher expectations of quality-of-life, which depends on energy) and energy usage and changing patterns of taxation and corruption.

Anyway, whatever you do, best of luck with it!
http://www.funmahol.com FunMahoL

thanx for that!great review
Zixinus

I’m listening to the ending song. It’s hilarious.

I don’t know if it intentional, but using nuclear was the best solution: simply create them around the waste deposit. At the last stage, I was making something like 800 per minute and was able to instantly recover my energy. The waste was a non-issue. Granted, I researched it to level 3.

Which was handy, as I made literally a WALL of tesla coils. The last stage was a breeze.

The floodlights were bloody useless.

My base was mainly defended by gun turrets, a wall of tesla coils and powered with nuclear power with some geothermal.

I had the smog rate of 0. The recycling ensured that my trucks would run on gas.

Is that intentional? :P
Ezuku

Well, I guess in reality nuclear power is borderline imba anyway :P. Afterall, out of all the alternatives, it’s probably the most widely used in the world for a reason.

I thought the floodlights were pretty good actually. They’re cheap enough to literally scatter all over the map, and so there’s just a rather significant continuous degen affecting them all.

Really though, research really made the game too easy I found, especially since it really was a free skill that only really required energy.

I look forward to the sequel however.
http://iterationgames.com jph

I like this,. a good sim for future planing,. zombies should be apearing anyday now, and we should all have our tesla coils and flood lights charged and at the ready!

my main suggestion/nit pick is that it seemed a bit choped up with the dialogs interupting the game play a bit too often (for me anyhow,.) just a little longer stratigic building would be nice but I suppose that comes in later in the game,. i didn’t finnish it yet. but a fun interesting game for sure.
Phasma Felis

I really liked how it gave a nuanced view of the tradeoffs involved in all forms of energy. Much better than the sugar-coated “Captain Planet” style of environmentalism. “Save the planet! How? I dunno!”
Zixinus

Ezuku

Actually, among the most, Nuclear power is depicted the most unrealistic: most nuclear power plants require a steady source of water and takes quite a bit of time to build.
Waste desposal is more problematic in real life, however waste could be reprocessed (recycled essentially) on-site.

But those would be just nit-picking. The “flaws” of the in-game model are due to gamistic simplification and suffer more due to the lack of overall strategy rather than unrealistic depiction.

Oh, and nuclear is not used enough world-wise, sadly.

I don’t want to turn this into a political discussion, but Greenpeace (whom originally protested against nuclear bomb testing, not power plants) and their like has ensured that the very mention of nuclear power can kill a politician’s carrier and God forbid a politician to do the right thing while sacrificing his carrier.

If you’re wondering what I’m talking about, look up “SuperphÃ©nix”.
jeff

ugh, this again? It’s been on Kongregate forever and I got so sick of seeing it in my unearned badges that I used Cheat Engine just to get rid of this long boring piece of crap.
Jesus Christ

god this game is fucking terrible
handsom harry

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