Ever wonder what it would like to a god, if there even is one? What it would be like to move mountains, shape rivers, influence civilization, kill peasants, build houses and discover new land? Maybe not, but wouldn’t it be cool? Well, Peter Molyneux and 22Cans answered that little voice in the back of your mind saying “yes!” Not literally, but Godus, their new Beta game, puts you in that role. You can do everything that I so nicely put in the list above, and more.
Godus is Minecraft-style game, but very different in it’s own great ways. The plot of the game is quite simple. You start in a nice, small island with palm trees. Only two people are on the island are your 2 starting followers. They will be the original ancestors of your whole civilization. Eventually, you will create a pathway of land that will connect your island back to your original homeland. it is lush, green hills and plains with lots of space to build houses and grow you civilization (terrain varies).
The terrain is made up of topographic layers of ground that you, as god, can manipulate to, for instance, make space for housing. To make a house, you have to have a person wander over to a free plot of land. Unfortunately, the people are not under you direct control. Your two little followers are pretty easy to control, considering they get attracted to free plots of land. Once they go to a plot of land, they start building on it. A building takes varying time to build, depending on the size of the plot (30 seconds to 40 minutes). Once that is done, your followers go into the house, in which they produce a child in a certain period of time. If there is a job to be done in the vicinity, a little flag will pop up over the house to show that a person inside is ready, and your can click on him to let him out.
A Godus Island
But if you thought letting him out would be free, or even changing the landscape is free, boy are you wrong. That’s what makes the game so diverse. There is this elixir-type thing in the game that you use as money. Getting people and changing the landscape cost money. Building houses, fortunately do not cost money. You get money by periodically clicking on the floating blob of elixir above every house, like people. The bigger the house, the more the money. The only other way to obtain and greedily spend money is chopping down trees and rocks, and buying one time special abilities and statues.
You progress in the game by finding resource cards and shrines. Remember, at the start, you only get a certain amount of land to work with. The rest is cut off in a colorless wall around your territory. You can expand your workable land by two ways. The first is by finding shrine relics and luring people (three at most) to come reestablish the shrine. Once the reestablishment is done, you get a expansion card, which expands your land. The second is by getting a certain amount of people, resulting in you getting either a ability or a expansion card. Each time you hit a population checkpoint, the next one is a little bit farther. That is another one of Godus’ ways of making sure you always have a goal.
Godus’ Unique Style
Godus is based on the fact that you are shaping a growing civilization. To make the technology grow, and obtain better and better abilities, you have to find resource cards. They are the heart of the game. The sign that a resource card is hidden underneath the ground is that confetti is puffing above the ground. If you remove enough layers, you will hit a chest. Inside the chest, a resource card is hidden. Once you get a certain amount of certain resource cards, you can unlock technology cards such as bigger houses or the calendar.
A Godus War
Godus is a nice mix of a strategy game like Civilization V, and a creative game, like Minecraft. The the way they designed the terrain gives the player a certain amount of power, but not to much so that they can just do whatever they want and have the game become a goalless game like Minecraft, which gets boring after awhile. Godus doesn’t. Godus is still in Beta, so your version will auto-update every time a new update comes out. You can get the Beta version on Steam.
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