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