A godly preview, hands on with Godus

In Godus, you are a god, who works towards building a place for your followers to live. You accomplish this by terraforming the landscape and allowing your people to build abodes.

A game by 22cans and released for Early Access in September 2013, Godus is similar in play-style to a mobile game. It involves a lot of waiting, and isn’t the type of game you’d play all day and then be done with. I tend to play it for about 10 minutes at a time, but at a higher frequency.

As your population expands and you progress in the game, you gain access to ‘Cards’ which unlock different building types, powers for your god, and ways to increase your people’s happiness. Once you unlock Settlements, you are able to ‘smash’ a group of abodes together to form a settlement. Citizens of a settlement will all work to progress towards a similar goal. For example, if you create a farming settlement, all of the citizens will start to construct fields nearby.

To be able to continue and progress throughout the game, you must collect “Belief”. Belief is gained by removing stones and trees from the ground, but also generates over time from your citizens’ abodes, settlement, and villages. However, you still need to collect it. Terraforming drains a lot of Belief, which can make the game progress slowly. It would be nice to be able to clear a large area of land right at the start, but this would use up so much Belief that you’d have to wait a very long time before you could start terraforming again.

I bought this game when it was first released, and since then they’ve changed it quite significantly and have reworked many of the game mechanics – but mostly for the better. The developer has added an exploration mini-game, which awards you ‘Stickers’. Stickers allow you to use the better cards you’ve unlocked. They’ve also added in another race of partyers, who will harass your people and distract them their tasks at hand. Where I am currently at in the game, you can scare these pests away by terraforming the ground, but later in the game, you have to use god powers to get rid of them (or so I’m told).

The game itself is fun, but as I mentioned earlier, not one you’d likely play for an hour or more continuously. There is a lot of waiting involved; buildings take X amount of time to build, Belief takes X amount of time to generate, and so on. This really gives it the feel of a mobile game. Another element that adds to this feeling (and really worried me at first) is was the addition of “Gems”.

Gems can be used to get more Belief, speed up buildings, and lessen waiting times… you know, typical F2P mobile gameplay. Much to my relief, the gems are not required to be purchased; you can gain them by finding them in random chests hidden around the game world or by sacrificing villagers and flinging them into the pit of doom. This last option does get you a gem, but at the expense of unhappiness. (Wonder why?) Thankfully, the developers seem to appreciate the fact that you’ve already paid for the game and that there shouldn’t be any micro transactions required to make the game playable.

One other thing I like about Godus is the sense that the developers are really trying to connect with their audience. As you play through the game and unlock new cards, the devs have included recordings of themselves explaining the card you’ve just found, how it will affect your people, and tips on whether to use this card right away or to save it for later. Since most cards require stickers to unlock, sometimes the stickers are better to save up. Stickers can also be gained from the chests, by the way.

The game world itself has a unique art style. It looks cartoonish and smooth, but also looks like it could have been painted with oil-based paints. Currently the game is still in Early Access, and is only 52% completed (according to the loading screen). If you’re looking for Black and White 3, this isn’t the game for you, as it has a completely different gameplay from B&W. I would probably give this game a 6/10 if I were to rate it now, in this unfinished state.

Although it is quite fun, it plays out as a mobile game, which can get annoying over time. It’s not really a title that you’d want to invest a lot of time into all at once (which could be viewed as a good or a bad thing, depending what you’re looking for).

There is a lot of waiting and anyone who is short on patience would not enjoy this game. Its redeeming factors though, include its beautiful landscape, the relationship that the devs are trying to build with their players and community, and the feeling of being an all-powerful god of course!

I can’t wait to see the game in its finished form and I look forward to helping my people evolve into an age of prosperity – or maybe I’ll smite them and throw them all into the pit of doom. Who knows – I am a fickle god!