Project Godus: Don't believe his lies

[brkl]

Oooh, I thought that was the full game! I guess there's still hope then.

[melmer]

Godus is out
 

iPad: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/godus/id815181808?mt=8

iPhone: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/godus/id815181808?mt=8

[Murdoc]

Alright, I'll give it ONE more shot, then I may just go about finding a way to permanently delete it from my steam library so I never have to think about it again, OR hail it as the thing I really hoped it would be.

 

Honestly, this feels like flipping the coin at this point... only worse, because I'd least I'd have a coin and invested 1 second of my time after doing that.

[dibs]

Its ok, i just got a notification telling me to collect my belief as it is full. I don't recall enabling notifications, but good job all that beliefe won't be wasted.

[dibs]

Now I get the option to sign in with Facebook. Sold.

[Jutranjo]

The new steam beta allows your client to hide games in your library.

[Twig]

The new steam beta allows your client to hide games in your library.

I saw that and was momentarily excited but then realized I get more joy out of putting those games I hate most in my FUCKKKKKKKKKKKK category.

 

I am a child.

[Dewar]

Hmm, interesting. I wonder how far along it is. Last time I saw a video it didn't look anywhere near ready.

[Dosed]

I've been playing Godus on my iPhone (along with a few other F2P games due to a lack of funds) recently and it's pretty lacklustre. I was enjoying it up until the point my builders suddenly needed wheat to make buildings. They hadn't required it up until this point, but all of a sudden they wouldn't build jack without it. It really slammed the brakes on when it came to progression and it's unfortunately became a game I just turn on to collect belief and wheat. It might as well be one of those virtual pet fish screen saver things from the 90's. 

 

I'm actually a pretty big fan of Molyneux's work in the past with stuff like both Black and Whites and the Fable series, but there's nothing here to indicate any semblance of uniqueness or innovation. Plus on the iPhone the sculpting is just god (teheLOL) awful and I just find my pecking indiscriminately at points on the landscape hoping the game will interpret my intentions correctly, which it does not. 

[melmer]

i've downloaded Godus on to my iPad/iPhone but haven't actually loaded it up yet. But i did dream that i played it, i had a base area and i was chipping away on bits of the environment and accidentally caused a flood which submerged my base

 

i wonder how the real Godus will face up against dream Godus

[Larsen B]

I've been playing Godus on my iPhone (along with a few other F2P games due to a lack of funds) recently and it's pretty lacklustre. I was enjoying it up until the point my builders suddenly needed wheat to make buildings. They hadn't required it up until this point, but all of a sudden they wouldn't build jack without it. It really slammed the brakes on when it came to progression and it's unfortunately became a game I just turn on to collect belief and wheat. It might as well be one of those virtual pet fish screen saver things from the 90's. 

 

I'm actually a pretty big fan of Molyneux's work in the past with stuff like both Black and Whites and the Fable series, but there's nothing here to indicate any semblance of uniqueness or innovation. Plus on the iPhone the sculpting is just god (teheLOL) awful and I just find my pecking indiscriminately at points on the landscape hoping the game will interpret my intentions correctly, which it does not. 

 

All true. I'm compelled to play it because I'm an idiot but it really is an odd game.

 

Kickstarted for PC when it's an iOS f2p game and yet not configured especially well as a touchscreen f2p game at all. It takes ages for buildings/wheat to complete (as you'd expect) but then the Belief caps out at a low amount after a short while. It wants you to constantly be accessing the game but wait for the actual progression which results in you constantly asking "what is there to actually do?".

[Twig]

Is this the first high-profile Kickstarter project to fail in this manner? Actually releasing a product that (everyone I've seen anyway) dislikes?

[JonCole]

Does the Ouya count?

[Twig]

Hmm yeah I suppose it would! I was thinking in the mindset of a video game, forgetting that things exist outside that scope.

 

Ouya, to be fair, didn't have a big name behind it, It succeeded largely on its own. I also think it strictly fulfilled its promises. I don't think Godus would've succeeded without Molyneux's participation, and, based on what little I know, it seems to have fallen short of what was promised. Or, maybe to be more accurate, danced around it in such a way that the end product is not what people expected or wanted? I dunno, I'm kind of rambling.

[Jutranjo]

Might the game not been a f2p mobile "god" game that Molyneux made if Molyneux hadn't been leading it? If it was just an HD game that stole every idea from either Populus or Black&White (both for the revolution in god games) people would have been fine with it I think.

[Dosed]

The pathing is also pretty atrocious. I've been trying to reach a beacon of expansion (I think maybe the 4th one) and my guys can go all the way up the hill but struggle to go back down. Or they'll point to a place they can't reach, but refuse to the route that has been built for them and most of their fellow virtual villagers have already taken. It's getting beyond a joke now. 

 

 

But I still haven't deleted it. 

[dibs]

You are more patient than I then Dosed. I had a lot of trouble carving out land on my iphone. i may try it on my ipad to see, but honestly, i could quickly see it turning into a grindfest and that turned me right off,

[Salacious Snake]

While playing the iOS version for review, I found something that may explain a few of the design decisions in the game:

 

[Dewar]

Sounds like the big PC patch comes out tomorrow. I'll be interested to see how much better/worse it is than the iOS version.

 

Edit: Actually, the big patch came out last week, this is just a hot fix. Anyone on PC playing it?

[Murdoc]

Apologies for the length and "live" commentary style...

 

 

Well, I started up Godus PC today.IT is labeled Beta 2.2 51% complete.

 

It immediately goes into developer commentary, sooo that's different. You can turn this off as Mr. Molyneux reassures me at least twice, so that's good, but kind of an odd way to start a game. He also mentioned that they will comment on what features aren't done. I'm guessing this is like a tutorial.

 

Oh god its a tutorial + commentary, this is awful, but I'm leaving it on because this is the default. Mr. Molyneux said I should remember this moment when I have 2 followers. From a design stand point, this was a terrible decision to have on as a default, it's over explaining what should be simple mechanics that should be taught in 2 minutes.

 

Oddly enough, just yesterday I watched George Fan's 2012 GDC talk about how he designed the tutorial section of Plants vs. Zombies. It was a really enlightening talk. Judging from Godus, Mr. Molyneux, nor his 21 compatriots watched this talk.

 

Anyway, 5 minutes + and I've learned how to only sculpt land. It feels better than when I tried it earlier, but still feels tedious as you get these little nuggets left over that aren't as responsive as the larger sections. Is there a way to get this system to be fun? I'm not sure, but I think it hit their original vision, it just turns out it isn't as cool as it was in our imaginations. The old tile structure of populous' land shaping, while technically inferior, remains timeless and enjoyable.

 

Ok so we then go into the game, which is still the tutorial and more along the lines of what George Fan was talking about, so yeah this is feeling a bit more polished. Still a lot of clicking though, I bet this would be fun with a touch pad.

 

Destroying rocks gives me belief... alright, sure.

 

I received a card, no explanation of what these are... yet.

 

It's telling me to find a sticker in a chest. No idea what that is or why I should be doing this. 

 

Found a sticker. Mr Molyneux chimes in. There is absolutely no way I would have any idea what any of this does without his commentary. It's an odd way to teach the player, but hey, I'm learning, I think. 

 

I am still very confused as to the cards/sticker system. It's a tech tree, I was told I can ignore if I want, but if I want a deeper game there is strategy here. Conceptually, I just don't understand cards and stickers if I am a god, but lets ignore this thought. From what I gather, you save up stickers to buy cards along the tech tree which will give you things like better houses, spells, farms and such. This doesn't sound too bad.

 

 

Okay, confused again. I found a card, I have a sticker, but my card isn't activated until the bar on the card is filled up. I use the sticker by dragging it onto the card to activate it. So I think I won't buy cards with stickers, I'll still have to find cards and collect stickers, but even when I find cards, I'll have to use my stickers to activate them. Okay simple enough, still really conceptually weird for what should be a tech tree. I guess its an attempt at something different. I'm a god collecting stickers to put on my playing cards...  I kind of like that image there, some sort of man child futzing with civilization. From a design stand point it seems like a lot of pointless systems to get me to the meat of the game... yet I think this is supposed to be the meat and the tech tree is the sauce.

 

Also, you can only use stickers on cards that have the same color... great.

 

I was just told by Mr. Molynuex this next bit will feel grindy and to spare with them for a moment because the real game is coming soon.

 

Alright I got belief, they are little spheres  on each house I have to click to get belief... again, it goes back to my original opinion in the early days, so much clicking for no reason. Mr. Molyneux chimes in again and shares what the intention for this system was, it makes sense, I see where he is coming from, and he does mention that in the future I'll be able to group settlements and click once to collect all the belief. So they acknowledge the problem of clicking each belief and added a way to deal with that, but still wanted to keep their original vision of clicky, clicky, clicky in the early game. Fair enough I guess.

 

Ok there is now a gem exchange. I'm collecting Gems now, I can trade in gems to get more belief and some stickers. Why do I get a sense that they toyed with the idea of paying real money for gems or that that might actually be an option on the mobile version... it feels like one of those screens. Nope, Mr. Molyneux chimed in and said this was a PC exclusive feature, but said it was very different from the gems on the mobile version... and yep he came out and said I wont be spending real money on gems in the PC version, so guessing mobile people get to pay for this stuff.  Fair enough, that's the economy.

 

I'm writing this as playing, but I'd like to point out I'm still basically in the tutorial and it's been 45 minutes. Between the prompts asking me to do a specific task and listening to Mr. Molyneux who usually talks an average of 3-5 minutes about each feature, this is taking awhile. However, I do appreciate it because I am learning the reasoning behind this kind of dumb game, even if I don't agree with the choices, or rather, the choices aren't what I wanted out of it. He does keep saying "we don't have this in the game yet but will sometime." So "released" like with most games these days is a soft term.

 

Collecting stickers, expanding stuff, learned A LOT about gems, this isn't so bad once they start opening it up. I'm going to stop here because I think I'm through the tutorial finally. I truely think this would be more fun to play with a touch screen, but then you have to deal with whatever the differences are with the mobile version. I think there might be an alright game here after you get through the slog of learning everything... most of which, to be honest, should take 5 minutes, but instead is probably a half hour at best.

 

My initial impression of the most recent version: Pretty okay. Much improved from the other two versions I played.

 

On a side note and there are a couple nit picky issues: One, the game feels a bit lifeless, a bit with the art (it could have used some post effects, better lighting, better materials, or even just some atmospheric fx. Music and sound could certainly use a boost, as with many of these types of games there will be times where you hang back and observe whats going on, and it's just not sucking me in.

 

Another thing, their fullscreen mode going back and forth with alt tabbing is seriously annoying, as you have to go into the menu and confirm full screen every time. A small problem, but hey, I noticed it writing this up.

 

Also, at some point I stopped generating belief, or belief is generated extremely slowly. So guess what? I guess I just let the game run or I go and use my gems to buy more belief. This really makes no difference to me on the PC as explained about, but hoo boy, as someone who follows games, the F2P design philosophy is a bit off putting; but I think we saw this coming from the initial beta.

 

Update 2: I mapped my mouse to my controller to see if its more fun to click on stuff. And let me tell you, yes. Instead of clicking 5 times to get rid of a rock or a tree to get 1 belief, I just hold down a and away it goes. This is far more enjoyable.

[Dosed]

Also, at some point I stopped generating belief, or belief is generated extremely slowly. So guess what? I guess I just let the game run or I go and use my gems to buy more belief. This really makes no difference to me on the PC as explained about, but hoo boy, as someone who follows games, the F2P design philosophy is a bit off putting; but I think we saw this coming from the initial beta.

Oh boy do they try to put you through the ringer on the stickers/gems/ore/wheat/belief collection on the mobile version. They all take forever to collect, with the exception of maybe belief. Wheat is 6 hours, ore is 18 hours and some buildings later on literally take 1 day and 13 hours to complete. I guess that's the nature of the beast, but I just changed the time on my phone and practically cheated. The cards almost become impossible to get because you need stickers and you can either get them by finding chests in the world or doing terrible, awful, terrible, terrible challenges where you guide a bunch of moronic followers through swamps to reach a temple. 

 

And if you think a touch screen think again. It's embarrassingly bad. 

 

Note: I have not yet deleted this game I piss and moan about so much. 

[Jutranjo]

You sure it's not to simulate a god making a world in 6 (real time) days?

[Thrik]

I'll tell you what, everything I've been reading and seeing about this game recently has just made me want to dig Black & White 2 the hell out — it still

, and I at least enjoyed the gameplay.

 

The only problem is I kind of played it to death and it likely has technical issues coming out of every orifice. That said, I never played the expansion pack. Did anyone? Is there enough gameplay to warrant it?

 

Ugh, why can't all my favourite god/sim franchises return and not be shit? Sim City, Zoo Tycoon, Roller Coaster Tycoon, Black & White... all these have the potential to get sequels that are so not shit. But every attempt seems to fail.

[Twig]

I would pretty much kill somebody for a Black & White remaster bundle on Steam or something. Does Lionhead (i.e., Microsoft) own B&W, or does EA? I think EA published those games, right? To Google I go! 

 

EDIT: Well this is a website: http://www.develop-online.net/analysis/ip-profile-black-white/0116146

 

I think from that (and Wiki and others) it's safe to assume MS owns the IP. Hmm.

[Thrik]

You can actually get hold of it new weirdly easily, at least in the UK. Maybe they produced so much stock they still have lots left, or perhaps it's retained some level of sales popularity so they keep it in every shop's minuscule PC game section.

 

I think the chances of a new iteration are pretty slim. I kind of feel like Lionhead has just became Fable Team now — which is pretty shit and likely why Molyneux got out of there. It really winds me up that we're in an age where god/simulation games could be so fantastic and even reasonably playable on consoles thanks to the widespread motion control we have now, yet what do we get? What do we get?