Nanuleu

First impression: nice-looking short and difficult casual strategy game. It doesn't play as nice as it looks. The basic strategy type is not new -- I've played flash games where you had to balance mining asteroids for resources with building defense installations while keeping them connected. But [i]NANULEU[/i] only has 7 levels total (each level only has 1 difficulty) and a frustrating difficulty curve. [i]Creeper World[/i] is much more fun to play, or even [i]BattleTime[/i]; these games have more levels and will last you longer. Needs more levels.

NOTE: This game was given to me by the developer for review purposes. This did not influence my review in any way. [h1]========================================================== ---------------------------------------OVERVIEW------------------------------------- ==========================================================[/h1] Nanuleu is a casual strategy / tower defense game of trees and warriors that has been out for some time on mobile devices, but is now available on PC. In Nanuleu, you fight for the side of light on seven stages across three different difficulty levels against an invading enemy, by planting trees to fend off the darkness, and eventually sending out your own warrior force to repel the invaders. [h1]========================================================== ----------------------------------------QUALITY------------------------------------- ==========================================================[/h1] Graphics - Graphics in Nanuleu are simple and tidy. Each level is made up of squares which can be used to grow stylised trees of different functions. Friendly and enemy warriors are small sprites with basic animations. The interface is basic, too, but functional and smooth, and suitable to the minimalist overall style of the game. The game is played from a fixed isometric viewpoint and features essentially no graphics options, beyond screen resolution and window/full-screen options, and the typical Unity single detail setting from 'fastest' to 'fantastic'. Sound - Sounds are minimal and relaxing, with quiet tones alerting you when events require your attention and light sound effects in response to your actions, or the slow battle being played out. Music is subdued and minimalistic as well. It sounds nice and for some reason it reminds me of Monument Valley. I can't imagine anyone finding it annoying or off putting, but you might prefer to play your own chillout tracks to suit the mood of the game instead. Gameplay - You begin Nanuleu by selecting the one available mission. This takes you to a semi-randomly created map and introduces you to the basic game concepts as you play the mission. This first mission is easy; as long as you've paid attention in the tutorial, you should have no trouble. Upon finishing the mission you're given a score and proceed to the next -- again, there's only one choice. But here things become much harder. Each mission starts you off on a small map with coloured squares that make up the world. Squares are either empty or have one of a number of resource symbols on them: water, minerals, or life. You start with a certain number of points of each of these resources, which are used to create roots, which expand your area of influence, or trees of a number of types. At the beginning only water and mineral trees are available to plant, but you'll quickly have protector, life, and, later, war trees as well. I didn't encounter any more than this during play, and the nature of the interface suggests that this is the limit of your planting abilities. Water trees can be planted only on water icons, and each one increases the rate of your water resource generation. Similarly, mineral trees can only be planted on mineral icons, and increase that resource generation rate. Life trees are treated similarly, but the life resource icon is much less common, with only a few on each map. Each tree you plant uses one life resource and a certain number of water and mineral resources. Roots are automatically planted to connect new trees to the existing root network, so the farther away you plant a tree from your existing growth, the more it will cost in water and minerals. Protector trees are planted to protect your territory, and act as the base defense tower of the game. Any enemy coming within the tree's predefined attack radius will be targeted by the tree, which shoots out a little bolt at it. War trees can only be planted after you've planted the requisite number of life trees beforehand. These act as a barracks, growing little warrior units that move towards the closest enemy units or trees/towers and attack them. While you're planting your trees and collecting resources, a progress bar near the top of the screen gradually fills up. When it is complete, an enemy tree is planted at one of a number of pre-set positions on the map. The longer you take to reach the point at which you can grow your own warriors, the more enemies will be spawning to attack you. The core mechanic of the game, then, is simple: balance resource tree planting with protection until you can grow war trees and fight back. The game includes some more fine-grained tactics, but these aren't described in the tutorial at all. For example, planting a life tree wipes out all enemy units currently on the map, which can be very helpful, and trees take damage when roots that connect them to the rest of the root network are destroyed, which would have been nice to know. Also, each level includes four stone altars that are also enemy targets, but I don't know if these hold any particular significance, other than contributing Achievement goals. Controls are simple, as you'd expect for a port from a mobile game. If you have a touchscreen then the game should support it, otherwise the mouse is used exclusively, and only one button is required for everything except zooming in and out (which uses the mouse wheel). Before I finish up, I'd like to offer a warning: Nanuleu is hard! I'm generally pretty good at tower defense and RTS games, but for a long time I just couldn't get the hang of Nanuleu. The first level was a cakewalk and took less than 10 minutes. The second level took me about 90 minutes to finally work out the one strategy that worked, and that same strategy kept working for the next level, and was looking pretty good for the level after that, too, until I got bored and turned it off. [h1]========================================================== -------------------------------------PROS & CONS------------------------------------ ==========================================================[/h1] Pros: + Nice minimalist graphic and sound styles + Steam achievements. Cons: - Minimal tutorial; no discussion of roots, light and dark control, or anything but the most basic tactics. - Very difficult unless you use the one strategy that works, which seems to be the same for every level. - Minimalist gameplay: very repetitive, even with only seven levels to beat. - Poor grammar that otherwise ruined a very polished presentation ("The enemies are multiply rapidly.") [h1]========================================================== --------------------------------------CONCLUSION----------------------------------- ==========================================================[/h1] I'm on the fence about Nanuleu; it's another game that makes me wish Steam's review system had a 'maybe' option for recommendations. While Nanuleu has a lovely minimalist art and music style, its minimalist approach to gameplay is not quite as endearing. If you're an achievement hunter who enjoys a challenge, it's probably for you. Personally, though, once I got the hang of it, I realised it wasn't really for me. [h1]5/10[/h1]

The consensus of both positive and negative reviews is that the game is simple. Whether that's a positive or negative for you depends on whether you're looking for a challenging grand strategy or just something mildly challenging to unwind after a long day. I certainly enjoyed my time with it. There is something to the core mechanics that is incredibly compelling and you'll find an hour flew by just like that. Regardless, I still feel there's a little bit of missed opportunity here. A Nanuleu 2 with some additional buildings, enemies, maps and maybe even Workshop Support could actually become a force to be reckoned with. It already has that casual, easy-to-pick-up feel to it, but it also needs a bit more depth to it so that it becomes hard to put down. If the dev is reading this, definitely consider this. There are a dime a dozen Total Wars, but I'm honestly incredibly hard-pressed to think of another game that has Nanuleu's elegance. You just might have stumbled upon a gold mine that simply requires a bit more digging.

Puzzle game, tower defense, minimalistic, short, resource management like in an RTS game (the resource management from M.A.X. is the most similar I've seen), some army management. Nanuleu focuses on the formula at the core of some tower defense and most realtime strategy games: Balance economy with warfare. Invest too much in your economy and you'll get overrun, invest too much in warfare and the opponent will eventually out-produce and overrun you. Everything is reduced to almost the absolute minimum: graphics, sound, variety in the gameplay mechanisms. The game is pretty short, with only 7 maps, and the first 4 are just tutorials. Still, at a $3 pricepoint you get more than your money's worth with 4-6 hours of engaging gameplay. The difficulty goes up sharply on the last three maps, with ever fewer strategies working and a dwindling margin of error. The hardest goal, beating map 7 within 15 minutes, turns this realtime/tower defense hybrid into a nice little puzzle game.

Worth the Price of Admission at $3.00 but it IS very short. (3 levels of 3 stages each) While concpets might get old if it dragged on, and there isnt enough variety in the types of trees you can build for it not to get stale if there were say 20+ levels, Everything here is so polished that you cant help but wonder why they didnt include 3-4 more trees to prolong it 3-4 more levels (of 3 stages each) because it IS worth your time. Just it wont consume much of it :)

还记得16年初中的时候玩过这个的手机版，挺不错的小游戏，画风清新，内容很精致。就是内容单一，关卡有些少。建议打折入手。 I still remember that I played this game on 2016 with my Android Phone when I am just a high school Student. This game is really a nice small game. It looks pretty and has exquisite content though with simple level. I recommend you to buy it when discard.

Aquele jogo de estratégia pra relaxar excelente quando precisa dar um descanso na sua mão e busca por um game só de mouse Design dinâmico e bonito só queria mais níveis, muito obrigada

Very elegant and lovely.

很多年之前在手机上玩过《Nanuleu》这款游戏 画面很简洁，单纯的一款塔防游戏 最近突然回忆起来，发现steam平台上也有这款游戏 基本上一口气打完了一大半关卡，至撰写该评测时基本接近通关(UPD:已经通关+全成就) 这款游戏其实很讲究策略，尤其是章节“余孽”中守护圣坛的任务 （这部分成就有的只有约10%玩家通过） 你可能需要暂时放弃一小部分资源效率，而去加紧构筑防线 也可能需要学会就近原则，在侧面而不是正面部署防御塔阻击敌人 体会到思考的乐趣，游戏过程纵然看上去很短，但是《Nanuleu》绝对是物有所值

It looks nice, sounds nice and plays nice till... Difficulty: Well, basically it is a hit-or-miss difficulty game. Guess wrong and use the wrong strategy and you won't get past the second level (and the rest is locked till you pass it. Atmosphere: Sound and colours are relaxing, the gameplay is plain annoying with the same pop-ups to click away each time you start a level, difficulty ramping up massively and very little options available to truly variate your strategy. Especially because every level seems to have the same limited 'tech tree'. In short: Bought it as a relaxing tower game, refunded a nice looking and sounding frustrating 'do this or lose' game.