When I first got this game I was hooked. I would have recommended it in a heartbeat to anyone who showed an interest in it. I even bought a copy for a good friend of mine so he could play it too. We even had PvP matches in the now removed multiplayer side of the game.

The game is not what I paid for anymore. I did not pay for a mobile touch screen game. The fact that 22cans have gone this route with Godus has made me play it less. I used to spend hours on end playing until it was changed to this mobile style.

Just take a look at this old screenshot which shows a few features I miss from the game:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=186039142

Features like flags on buildings to show when they are full that wave in the direction of the wind!
And a follower who is named after a friend who I beat in multiplayer PvP match.
Not to mention the better looking buildings with more variety.
The side bar of skills was easier to use than the current system.
How about the other races, like the ginger hair race or the mountain men. Now we are just us and the Astari :/

And have a look at this old screenshot too, the larger towns created using a statue with actual roads:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=327651332

Just these 2 screenshots alone show how far backwards the mobile style game took. So much variety removed to make it 'more suitable' for the mobile devices.

Again, I did not pay for a mobile game. I feel like I was cheated out of my money, led to believe I was getting a cool game that I actually enjoyed playing only to have it taken away from me and replaced with an inferior substistute, not worth even half what I paid for, that mobile users can play for free!
I get the feeling that this is what 22cans intended from the start, get our money and use it to launch themselves into the mobile gaming market.

For this I can not recommend Godus anymore. It's a sad case as I loved how it was going before they took the mobile route :(

This is a Kickstart project I regret backing. Since it's first iteration, it clearly showed it was a mobile game transplanted onto a PC. Regardless, I loved the art style and I played it for many many hours. Then 22Cans went silent for months and I lost interest and abandoned it. Recently they picked up and I've spent a few hours playing the latest build.

And it's ♥♥♥♥ing dreadful.

The mobile game transplated onto a PC has fully metamorphosed into a pay to win mobile title. As an example, take farming. As soon as you discover farming, you can no longer build. Anything. Unless you have wheat. Each farm produces wheat - in 90 minutes of real time. REAL TIME? WHAT IN THE ♥♥♥♥? So every one and a half hours, I can build a couple of houses. (And the ♥♥♥♥ing ♥♥♥♥♥♥ farmers can't harvest the wheat, oh no, you have to do it yourself).

Of course, you can always buy wheat using gems. 22Cans love gems. They go out of their way to constantly point this out. They have built a game around the microtransactions of gems. Because PC users have already paid for the game (their words), PC users don't have to buy gems. Instead, we can sacrifice our followers in a pit to get a gem. Of course, that makes your followers hate you, also triggers another real time timer to respawn that follower - in 30 minutes or so. Whilst the new faction (which I have to admit, is funny) steal your followers.

The last update also added voyages, frustrating mini games where you try to get your little dudes to a temple for rewards. Of course, if you screw up then you can either way HOURS of real time for reinforcements to arrive to try again or... you got it, pay gems.

This game has so much promise. I really like the art style, the humour, and the ideas of the game. But the implementation is ♥♥♥♥ing attrocious.

I have never sworn so much in a review... I'm ♥♥♥♥ed with the direction of this game and it shows.

I shall go back to playing Banished. Hopefully 22Cans realize what sort of a ♥♥♥♥ed up abortion they are creating with these delays and reduce them to miniscule levels or I can't see this working. Maybe mobile users have a different mindset to traditional PC / console gamers as I don't understand how on earth they think putting realtime blocks in place makes a game fun.

/endrant.

I want to like this game. I have played over 30 hours and have tried to feel out and understand this concept of using REAL time as the main form of currency in this rather UNgodly city builder. This attempt by 22cans to carry over Gems from the mobile version (gems being the currency that users pay real money for in the iOS version) and trying to squeeze them into the PC version is absolutely a bummer. For a few days I started to think that it might work alright, but in the end its just an empty currency middle man that really doesn't feel like it belongs in a game I have already purchased for a premium price. All the gems in the world are currently not helping me reduce the absurd wait times for generating specialized followers (farmers, miners) one of my wait times is currently 21 hours (REAL HOURS) for 1 new farmer to be produced. That 1 new farmer allows me to increase my total farms by 1 and makes me shudder at the future cards that have yet to be unlocked that require... 70 farms... or worse... 50 Mines. That is literally weeks of forced waiting just to unlock in game functions that are less than enticing. And like everything else in the game, the price and wait times goes up with every added specialized follower or item placed. At this rate, I would assume the last farmer of my settlement will take around 2 days to be produced. 22cans wants you to believe that these "valuable gems" are their gift to us gamers who want to "play at our own pace" when really its just a misplaced ported currency that might make sense in a freemium mobile game model where you want your casual pocket gamers to be dropping $5-50 a pop for small offerings of gems that are really only used to bypass timers. How fun. These gems in their current form do not belong in a paid PC title.

Not that you're reading any of these complaints, Peter Molyneux, but I was a big fan back in the days of Populous and up to Black and White, but you have proven time and time again since then that you are completely out of touch with what your fans (and now your duped financial backers) want. 21 hours for a single farmer Peter? What PC gamer has the time to check in constantly to collect belief? How have you managed to take such neat looking little sandbox antfarm with so much potential and turn it into a game about waiting and tedious collection of such ridiculously related resources? You sold your backers on the idea that you were going into this without a publisher telling us that this would lead to completely unhindered creativity and maximize community influence on the product. How did you think we would feel when you reveal that you are building this game around a freemium mobile business model (because you DID end up partnering with a publisher after all) and we the PC users and financial backers of this game are left with a ported version of it that uses the exact same mechanics of your mediocre pay to win "app" games. Waiting so long for relatively unexciting things to happen completely disrespects the time of the gamers who want to sit down and actually play a game for more than thr snippets of time between the various and superfluos wait timers. Im lucky to get a half hour before I literally run out of things I can possibly do.

You've lost it Molyneux, or you've just gradually become more and more of a con man over the years. This kickstarter is almost theft as you used our money (when you have millions) to fund a game that you are hoping will saturate app markets and shine just enough when compared to the morass of bad free to play games so that you can... what... sell gems for a living and retire this profession you obviously stopped caring about? Next time, do it with your own money, chap.

At the time of this review, Godus is basically just a freemium mobile game that has had the pay aspects very sloppily pulled out.

Nearly everything is timer based, which is aggravating to say the least. Sculpting burns through your "belief" resource like crazy bananas, so you get to spend a lot of time not playing the game while waiting for more belief to spawn. Of course you can spend gems on belief and other resources, but to do that you have to sacrifice your people to the pit of doom, and wait about an hour or so for them to respawn. Oh, and forget about dragging your followers from the far reaches of your civilization into the one and only pit of doom- IF the buggy controls dont end up guiding all your little people to some random spot on the map you didn't intend, they'll have routing issues and just get stuck until you kill them.
Having to wait an entire day for a farming colony to spawn a farmer is just frustrating as all get out. One would think with all the 'pay x gems now to do y' they would have included an option to fill a settlement with workers in exchange for gems but nope. You get to wait.
Voyages are frustrating annoying mini-games, which I honestly can't tell if they're broken or not for me as I completed one and then could no longer access the menu to it.
There is no easy in game option to restart the game fresh, you have to manually locate the save. A minor nuisance, but still.
The graphics could be better- I prefer to play most god-like games zoomed out for a better overview but it doesn't like to render that far out.
The unlock cards though gameplay mechanic seems straightforward but NOPE. You don't actually unlock the feature on the card until you put enough matching stickers on it- oh and you can use gems to buy more stickers.

I actually do enjoy the sculpting aspect, despite it's quite buggy nature. However having to wait for hours for enough belief to actually do it is annoying.

It's only playable if you only spend 15-20 minutes on it here and there, since the timers elapse in real time. That said, I'm glad I got it on sale for really cheap because it is NOT worth the 20+ dollars they're asking. It's still considered "early access" and it says only 52% complete so... here's hoping they fix it so it's more of a real game and not just a gutless imitation of a pay model. Until then, it's not worth more than 5 bucks.

Went from the next Populous to a terrible phone game that is geared to run on microtransactions.

I feel like they used my money to fund their jump into the mobile game market.

Let's get the ground work out of the way.

I quite like Molyneux games. I played the crap out of Populous and Populous II as a kid (and syndicate wars, magic carpet and pretty much every other game he had a hand in in the late 80s and early 90s). and I loved most of them. Not all of them, but most of them. So I'm not of the "It's Molyneux! Get him!" mindset.

And I know that this game is very, very much in the early stages. It's understood that thre's not going to be a great deal of content, and that a lot of the cool stuff they want to put in won't be there for a while.

Fine.

But with all that, I cannot in good conscience recommend Godus. Not just in its current Early Access form, but at all. Not because it's Molyneux. Not because it's not ready. But because I have a real problem with the design choice that clicking a few thousand times to move landscape into a more efficient configuration. It's mind numbing. It's repetitive. It's physically uncomfortable after any length of time. And that process - the slowly dragging tiny bits of land so that settlers can be coaxed into building more or bigger settlements? That's the main mechnic of the game.

I got some brief enjoyment collecting belief as fast as I could to try and play the tune the belief bubbles make before it reset, but very brief. After about 10 minutes I realized that I was experiencing all the joy of a Skinner box.

The folks at 22 cans are working to make their game more fun. They really are. But until such time as they remove this bizarre fixation of social-media gameplay, I can't see a single reason to recommend this. The god game genre really does need a new contender, but unless something fundemental changes, this isn't it. I don't feel like some powerful (or even innefective) deity sheperding (or brutalizing) my believers. I feel like an under appreciated road worker who is tasked with levelling the land through mouseclicks alone.

Maybe this game will get the changes it deserves. Maybe something that's fun to play ratehr than just think about will come out of it. And if it doesn't, I'll vry happily eat my words. I'd really LIKE to eat my words.

Last year i had actually written a review for this game giving it a massve thumbs up. However the direction of development now means I am doing a complete 180.

Dont get this game at present. The game revolves around you playing god. A god that can sculpt the landscape, direct your people to build things, mine resources, breed, erect great temples and use your godly powers to sent great balls of fire and brimstone upon your enemies.

Sounds awesome right? Well it would be if not for the fact that the base of this game now has it foundations on the Mobile phone version, so huge F2P elements.

Anything you need to do requires a resource called belief, which is generated by your followers in their houses, which you have to wait for....up to 30 minutes in some cases. So build more houses, so you get more belief right?

Yeah but that would require an abundence of belief in the first place, which you dont have, to speed up building you need to direct followers to the area you want to build on which, you guessed it, costs belief.

Hey maybe take a ship sailing and play the mini game whilst you wat? No that requires followers in which you have to wait for.....yet more belief.

To be honest the whole premise of waiting to play is beyond belief.

Dont get this game. You will be sorry.

I will ammend this review as they make changes....if I can ever be bothered to to boot it up again.

Have you ever dreamt of playing halfassed smarthphone games on your PC?

Then this game is for you!


This game features..

- LAND SKULPTING
- >"LEASHING" FOLLOWERS
- PREMIUM CURRENCY IN THE FORM OF >GEMS
- A NEXT GEN "WAIT X HOURS FOR YOUR ♥♥♥♥ TO BUILD" FEAUTRE (REMEMBER TO USE GEMS IN ORDER TO BUILD IN ACCEPTABLE SPEEDS)
- POKEMON CARDS
- THROWING PEOPLE IN VOLCANOS

AND ALL THIS FOR 20 USD

GET THIS GAME...



For your damn phone, its free

I want to like this game. I also want to play it. But the game doesn't want me to play, it wants me to wait, and watch the timers. Thats not the game that was advertized. Its only 50% done, so there is still hope. but not much.

Pros:
Build your town
Guide your followers
Scultpt the landscape
Play cool sculpting senarios

Cons:
Construction is timer limited
Guiding your followers costs resources that are timer limited
Sulpting the landscape costs resources that are timer limited
The Senarios are timer gated, limiting the number of senarios you can complete at a time.
The currency used to speed up the game is timer limited and reduces generation of all other timer limited resources.

When I'm playing the game, I'd give it an 8/10 would recomend.

When I'm not playing the game but have it open, I'd give it a 0/10 would not recomend

Do NOT buy this game unless you are really okay with high wait times. It is NOT free-to-play, but it has elements that make it feel that way. The devs are theoretically working on balance issues, and to give them credit, gameplay engineering should probably be what they get working right now. However, there are serious timing/balance/resource issues with the game that make this frustrating gameplay experience. I'd recommend anyone curious about this to follow the forums, and "wait and see" the game finished before plunking down $20. That said, if you can find it on a 90% off deal, go for it, because the game really does have a lot of potential.

Bottom line: Wait until this game is finished, then read the reviews before you decide.

I bought this game when it first came out. I believed in the Molyneux. I played for an hour or so, and it was kinda fun, but it was annoying to stretch all the lands and crap and it didn't work well. So I put it away. It's early access after all, I can forgive it.

I check back often, because I realized i've been Molyneux'd... again. This game is the same as Spacebase and that other game that finished EA early, except this won't, in fact it'll probably never be ready because they made it into an iOS game too. Which means they cut back on their features. Which means.... we've been Molyneux'd again.

Don't buy this game. I don't know why I keep falling for this man's lies. But I do. I am an idiot. Like someone who keeps going back to their mate who says "Please baby, i'll change, this is it for real, I mean it this time. I'm sorry." and then I get cheated on again.

Save your money. Donate it to charity instead.

What? This is ridiculous. I just want to make a town. I don’t want to schedule it on my alarm clock for six days to come back for a building to be completed.

I so badly wanted this game to be good. I loved Populous, and I've been vaguely following this for a while. On seeing it available for a mere £3.50 elsewhere, I thought, "This is gonna be a steal."

How wrong I was. And let me make this clear, a full asking price of £15 is an absolute, utter, complete rip-off.

What you are buying is a mobile game. This is not a PC game. Yes, they've TRIED to adapt it to the PC... The gems, which you would clearly pay money for on your mobile device, have alternative ways of being attained, through sacrificing followers, or doing voyages (puzzle missions). But you still have to sit around for hours on end for them to build things, checking frequently to collect items by tapping... Uh, CLICKING on them, forming the core function for why anything gets done.

I guess the premise of the game is cool, and definitely brought me to playing it. You drag land to make it suitable to be built on. Your people can only navigate certain terrain and rely on you to make a clear path.

But it reeks of mobile game syndrome. Almost every single action costs "belief" (energy), which recharges over real life time. This is only made worse by the fact that although you have an uncapped amount of belief, you still have to collect it from each individual household your people build, which DO have maximum caps, varying on the type of house. That means your early game houses, making maybe 70 belief per hour, max out at 40. You can see the problem here, if you want to make progress whilst doing other things.

And otherwise, I don't yet see any real reason to play. All you do is sculpt land to expand and repeat. There doesn't seem to be any real goal. The voyages (missions) are straightforward and irritating, especially when the final idiot villager you needed to reach the checkpoint decides to go back to the start because you were half a second too slow molding the land, meaning you have to wait (a significant amount of time in real life) for those villagers to respawn so you can complete the mission.

I will probably keep playing, for a little while. But honestly, even paying £3.50, this was a rip-off. You might as well just go play Tiny Tower. Or, if you want a really fun PC adapted mobile game, try New Star Soccer! This game has so much work to be done if it's to become a PC game.

EDIT: I've played this more to give it a better shot, and my only additional comment is, the path finding is so ♥♥♥♥ing awful, it makes the voyages (missions) impossible sometimes.

Uninstalled this garbage after 2 horrendous, eternity-like hours.

If you're into minimizing/window'ing games and letting them play themselves for dozens of real time minutes while you play an actual game, then this is for you.

The creator commentary even suggests you go do something else while " X " is happening, and to check back later.
Not my cup of tea, complete and utter shash.

Playing 2.2.1 i think and it is such a disappointment, dont get me wrong there are flourishes of brilliance here, just like any previous early game levels of Peter's, Black & White 2, Fable, Dungeon Keeper, they all introduce some fun and engaging mechanics... but as it opens up, more and more 'features' are piled on to just over complicate the theme developed early on. How does this effect Godus? Well.

Belief - This is where things get off to a rough start, waiting for resources is one thing, we all didnt mind watching our gold being mined and slowly piled in our treasure rooms for Dungeon Keeper, or resources being worked in Black and White 2 but where Godus fails is that it takes SOOOOOOOOOO long to generate enough to actually do something and there is no player feedback as to why you get this resource, we cant see them praying, just a bubble to click when a timer finishes when they feel like acknowledging you, that doesnt make me feel like a god, it makes me feel like im looking at belief cooking in a microwave, im looking at a number on a machine to tell me when i can consume my resource, rather than the excitement of cooking it myself and seeing things change organically infront of my eyes. If you are going to have belief. make it something that gives you visual feedback, let us see our followers in awe of us, give us worshipping tents, campfires or churches that followers can go into and express that to us, MOST IMPORTANTLY have those generate belief without us having to click bubbles, whats wrong with it filling by itself over time without me having to witness and acknowledge each person, if i had to play theme park and literally click all my stores and rides to get money from them i'd stop playing in an instant. I'm a god right? i am omnipresent, im not a small child popping bubbles, i want to feel godlike and not like a god damn factory worker, i aint getting paid, i paid to play this! Let me have more fun and engaging activities and less work! Let me be creative as the creator!

Id also like to note how the devloper commentary keeps running along the lines of 'This doesnt seem helpful yet but wait a few hours and you'll see', Peter if i have to wait more than a minute for something to require my direct attention in a game or hell be able to do anything what so ever of my choosing the immersion breaks down, i stop questioning my ingame actions and pull back to question what im doing with my life, if the answer to that is 'waiting a few hours before i can play and progress' you are doing something wrong as a game designer...Pacing, look it up!

Sculpting - I know many people would rather have a large paintbrush style scheme to quickly shape the area how they deem fit, but i like the more methodical pace this game has, each little touch feels like a delicate hand of god, each click feels like it has a purpose, it fits themematically with your power as a god slowly getting more powerful and powers later do increase how much you can sculp. It ties with belief fueling the power you have, but then thats the shot to the foot, it would be so much fun to sculp all these layers and make something unique to you, yet because it is funded by belief, you dare not use limited belief to sculp unless it fits in with later game strategie, so you end up with a pretty bland group of flat lands full of abodes, rather than a complex village with different elevations, houses on hills etc. I loved how city building was in Black & White 2, minus the wierd happiness bugs ofcourse, it was the feeling of drawing your roads, plotting out your town, shaping your civilization. Even if you do decide to break form and build on some hills the sculpting layers make it hard to make steps for your villages to climb up, if you dont want to add slants to the layers to make it easier for your follwers to climb then perhaps a power that when selected sculps in a staircase type fasion for hills and such, making it less finicky. Have it so i can sculp without using a resource, make it so i unlock the ability to sculp certain planes but then do so freely once unlocked, i like the feeling of sculpting the world, i just dont like moving a foot of land and wasting what little belief i had.

Building - I kind of like how my villages decide where buildings are plotted, i nudge them in the right direction by plotting out a space of land and they decide where to build on it, it makes me feel like ive blessed them with free will, it feels godlike in a way which is the whole point. I dont mind clicking on buildings to send out my builders, even though there is no thematic feedback, such as seeing my builder seem inspired through divine intervention like Noah and the Ark. It starts of alright, not taking much time, seeing your population expand is satisfying.....BUT THEN, the timers get larger, larger and larger, waiting and not playing begins as you wonder what you are doing with your life, oh you could send more builders to help but wait, your belief has run dry so you just wait. If that wasnt bad enough, once you build a farm, NOW all of a sudden your builders refuse to work unless you give them some food...what were they eating before, SAND!?

Time to wrap up, i could go into the voyagages but its bugged and i cant do anymore, they are basically simple puzzle levels that grant stickers to unlock abilities. The sticker system itself being something i again despise, it ♥♥♥♥ed me off in Mass Effect 3 multiplayer and ♥♥♥♥es me off here, it ♥♥♥♥ed me off when i was a kid filling my sticker books and is just a clever marketing tool to get kids lunch money, im a grown adult Peter, start treating me like one. I basically feel as it stands now ive brought a game on false promises, im fueling the development of a free to play designed mobile made game. Mobile games and their practises in my eyes destroy good game design and just prey on idle hands with engagement levels of popping bubblewrap. If you want this to be a great PC game then start actually designing it as such, seperate it from the mobile money grab, even the sims PC games havent stooped this low yet, infact i'll use that as an analogy for this game.

Godus, its like the sims, if you had to wait for them to pick there noses minutes at a time before moving on to their next alloted task, watch them sleep without time speeding up, plot their houses one wall at a time while you actually wait for the builders to come round and place it together brick by brick AND ONLY IF you give them garden grown and homebaked wholegrain bread :|

This game is designed to be played in sessions of about 5 minutes, on an iPad. Seriously, don't buy this game. It's crap.

Bought this game because i was a huge fan of Black&White. Its not black&white at all. Spend hours clicking on all the abodes to collect belief, that you'll spend in 2 minutes while you reshape a tiny portion of the landscape. The game knows this is the case, which is why the game itself recommends you constantly do other things when you run out of belief to do what you want.

You'll spend most of your time with upkeep after the storms start coming... and the devs act like thats a good thing, since you've run out of belief and cant do anything else.

If you're a Black and White fan, RUN.

The game is clearly geared towards tablets and mobile for starters. Which means it might be fun to play while you're at the doctors office, but if you're expecting any complex, challenging, exciting interactions you're out of luck. Basically all you do is drag around the landscape to make flat land so you're little followers can build cube houses automatically. The novelty of that wears off in about 20 minutes and there's NOTHING to do while they build except get stickers. You just sit there with your thumb up your ♥♥♥ watching a timer count down 3 minutes to build 1 house. What fun. Even if you wanted to continue sculpting you can't, because you need belief to do it, and no followers means no belief. It takes ages to generate belief too, I sure love waiting 10 minutes so I can finally drag the ground around a little bit more woo!

Even after you're far into the game it doesn't get much better you dont get to throw rocks, fireballs, trees or anything like that. Best thing you get is a meteor strike. The most insulting thing of all is these silly limitations put on you! You're a god for crying out loud. Want to build a town center? Nah, brah you need 50 premium gems. And all the waiting... waiting... waiting... Might as well be called waiting simulator. What fun does it add to make me wait 10 minutes to expand the terrain in a SINGLEPLAYER game? What does that add? Nothing... frustration is about it.

I bought this game a looonng time ago with early access, hoping it could be something great. They haven't done a whole lot since. They overhauled a boring beta to have a slicker interface and a happiness meter! Added a few tid bits for the late, late game. This is months, and months, we're talking about here. What the hell are you guys doing?

In summary this is one of those games that wants you to play for 10 minutes, leave it for 6 hours so you can play it for 10 minutes again. It's boring, repetitive and not very Godlike. All you do is wait, sculpt, build, wait, sculpt, and build. As a B&W fan, I feel abused. This isn't a God game, it's a sleep aid.

Repetitive and boring, if somewhat relaxing at the start. This is basically a free-to-play mobile game with some minor changes to accommodate the paying PC player.

Though still in beta, I have dipped my toes into Godus several times. Each time, I'm hoping for Populous and I end up with Farmville. I sat for 15 minutes watching buildings complete and favour recharge waiting for something to happen. Nothing happens, the game is slow and boring. There are other modes that seem interesting, like player vs computer or potentially player vs player, but they require spending a significant amount of waiting to get into.

Unless they gut the entire game and respin from scratch the progression mechanics, do not bother.