Godhood is a strategy management game that has entered Early Access, created by developer Abbey Games. In it, your first disciple sings your praises. Then promptly gets tossed out of their home village by the elders. They will return to make everyone understand however because, after all, you are the best god. Does the game give you the tools to live up to your follower’s hype? This is our Godhood review.
First, I want to say that I love the art style and music. Everything is enjoyable to look at yet simple in appearance. But I can see how it may not be to the taste of some players. The music I found quite relaxing at times. I could see myself playing Godhood at the end of a long workday to unwind.
When starting a new game, your first step is to create… well, you. I was happy with the number of god/religion customization options available. You can stick with the defaults and randomize your godly appearance or customize everything from how you are addressed down to the various colors used for your appearance/religion. Once satisfied that your religion is ready to begin converting the unbelievers you then need to choose a commandment, so your followers know right from wrong, these include: War/Peace, Lust/Chastity, and Generosity/Greed (Though these final two are not currently available during Early Access). Once chosen, the opposite commandment will become a vice and cannot be taken later as an additional commandment. Each commandment provides a unique level reward as your religion grows and can include some interesting gameplay elements.
For my first religion, I went with Lust, because why not, and was surprised to find that you had to pay attention to what gender(s) you opponents were attracted to then match them up with the attackers to maximize the effectiveness of certain abilities. This was above and beyond paying attention to the element disciples are resistant or weak too based on their chosen class. While interesting this mechanic eventually became a problem after moving beyond the first island/continent, my disciples seemed much less effective during the game’s ritual combats called Sacraments. I had much less of an issue while playing my second religion based on War. It could have been just my selection of disciples and how I leveled them, but overall War seemed a bit better balanced during ritual combats. I had the same experience with the Religion I based on Peace.
During these ritual conflicts, a player chooses 3 disciples to take part and each team takes a turn. The various disciple abilities and passives can affect which team goes first and how individual disciples sometimes act out of turn to defend or counterattack opponents. As a god though once you choose your team it is hands-off for the rest of the combat. When it is time for your team to attack the ability used is selected randomly from 5 slotted active abilities you unlock by leveling up a given disciple. Sometimes negative effects can randomly occur as well, such as becoming nervous, scared or falling asleep for a round or more. I mean come on really… asleep! Though some of my followers were quite old at that point so I couldn’t blame them too much. Oh yeah, by the way, your disciples age over time and when they do actions can cause them to tire more often. If a disciple becomes tired or broken, after a Sacrament, then they need to rest for one or more turns before being assigned further actions.
As you progress you level up your religion and followers. Eventually, you can recruit new disciples to your faith to help spread the glorious word of You. Each disciple takes up a certain amount of worshipper support points with the maximum amount being determined by your religion’s level. If you get close to the maximum though you can always send a disciple away forever to the outer regions… After the first fight with a new disciple, you get to choose their class, of which they have 3 preferred ones, and can then customize their appearance. There is a ton of options for disciple appearance and if you want every one of your disciples to look the same you can even copy a sequence code and paste it into another follower’s customization page.
After this, the game runs into some problems. Gameplay quickly becomes the repetition of assigning disciples, only 3 at a time, to tasks in your home village or going to the map to convert other villages by ritual combat. Certain features like trying to raise a disciple’s faith seem slow and/or broken. The interface, while very good at displaying information when you mouse over different areas, can be overwhelming to new players and the game needs a new player tutorial explaining where to look for important information when choosing disciples for a sacrament and what stats/information is most important to consider upon entering combat.
Having said that Godhood is in Early Access and many features have not yet been implemented/refined fully. I also only had the game freeze once on me during my 10 hours played which in comparison to other Early Access titles is not bad at all. Video and audio settings, while not numerous, were more than enough to tailor the gameplay experience based around this type of art style/graphics. I did also like that under the general tab there is the option to turn off cloud saves.
If you are interested in supporting the developer during Early Access and really like the art style I would recommend trying out Godhood. Otherwise, at the price of $26.99 US, I would suggest waiting until the game is closer to release and taking another look. The game has a lot of potential and I look forward to seeing the improvements during the rest of Early Access.
COMPARE TO: The Universim
