Godus 2.0 - My 2nd first impressions (long, no tl;dr)

[bytestream]

My initial plan for 2.0 was to play it for a few hours yesterday and then to update my review. Well, as it turns out that's not really possible cos - spoiler alert - the game plays way too slow to do that. So, instead I am going to write this now and turn it into some kind of ex ante review later this day. Yes, that could work, let's see how it plays out.


The first thing I noticed once I started Godus again after about 5 months is that I still really love the art style. It doesn't have fancy graphics or the most polished textures, but it really doesn't have to. The architectural art style really does it for me and makes me wanna play and enjoy the game.

Sadly that enthusiasm doesn't last very long. The tutorial is the first spoke the game puts in your wheel. It's a nice idea but, at least in my book, it doesn't play out cos it's basically just a tutorial for the tutorial. I am not that far into 2.0, I haven't even unlocked farming settlements yet, but if it plays anything like 1.3.1, which at this point seems very likely, the early ages offer little to no gameplay and therefor in fact are nothing but a very long drawn out tutorial. Under these circumstances a real tutorial isn't necessary, deactivatable tips would do the trick too.

Then I noticed is that the world still feels empty and dead, which is a real shame. The art style definitively has it's charm and could really shine if the world would actually be alive. Granted, it's way better than it was in 1.3.1, but having a few followers gather around camp fires or resting beneath palms just doesn't cut it, I need to see more than just 10% (or so) of my followers. This is 2014, and even though I don't expect top notch graphics I want to see my civilization thrive, I want to see my people do their daily labor, I want to see kids play in the streets and even some wildlife passing by my settlements. But hey, it's still beta so these things might come later down the road.

What however did change is the amount of clicking, it's really been reduced. You now can sculpt more land with just one click and drag move and you are also able to collect belief or remove rocks and trees by just clicking and dragging. That really makes the game feel a lot better, it's way more fun to play now, good work on that one.
But, at the same time, did you really have to remove quick sculpting? It now takes way longer to fill gaps. And why can't I dig down or sculpt cliffs anymore? Is that stuff gone or just locked further down below the timeline?
I also have to say that sculpting seems to be way less precise now. I often don't get to pull or push the layer I want to even though I definitively clicked it.

The next thing that strikes me is that the game still controls like a mobile game, now probably even more so than before. Okay, it might just be me, but when I play a PC game I want it to feel like PC game, I want it to fully utilize the input devices we have and not just use the mouse and maybe the keyboard as a cheap substitute for a touch screen.
Let me elaborate: First of all there are no tooltips at all, every time I want to now something I have to click twice, first to select an object and then a second time to bring up an info window which then covers the whole screen. That's how you would do it on a mobile device with a 5" display but not on a PC with a 24" monitor. As a PC gamer I am use to just hover my cursor over something to get all the useful information displayed in a neat little tooltip.
Next on the list we have the lack of a quick action bar; while Godus 1.3.1 kinda had it it's now gone in 2.0. As a result picking and using god powers became incredibly tedious and annoying. Clicking through multiple screens to select a god power is again something that is somehow necessary on mobile devices but sure as hell not okay on PCs. Just give us a quick action bar and let us select god powers, sculpting tools and everything else by pressing number 1 to 0. We have a keyboard, let us use it.
Managing settlements also feels weird, why do I have to click, hold and drag if I want to assign my followers a job? Why can't I just click, hold the button down and use my scroll wheel to determine how many followers I want to assign? Why do I have to search for unemployed people instead of having the system do it for me?
And finally we have the timeline which once again forces me to click and drag instead of just letting me use my scroll well. It's there, right on top of my mouse, why do you guys hate it so much?

After playing the game for a few hours I also noticed that everything takes way longer now which again is not okay on PC. In mobile games, which are meant to be "played on the toilet", it is okay to just play for a few minutes and then do something else while the timers tick down, but on PC you expect to be able to play for at least an hour or so without having to constantly wait for basic stuff to be finished. This is especially true when you are still in the very early tutorial stages of a game where you can't do much to begin with. It is okay if special and limited buildings take quite a while, but basic stuff like abodes should be done rather quickly.
Another big disappointment is the timeline that now takes insane amounts of stickers to get anything done. For example it takes over 20 stickers to unlock Mud Lugs at 3000 BCE, are you serious?! This is again something that might be okay in a mobile game where you want your player base to spend money to speed things up, but it simply can't work that way in a 20€ PC game.

At this point I started to realize that I sound like a broken record: "It's not a mobile game. It's not a mobile game. It's not a mobile game. ...". Well, I guess I am wrong and it in fact is a mobile game. To be clear, I don't mean that in a necessarily negative way, mobile games can be quite fun, some elements like the puzzle-style voyage of discovery missions are nice little time wasters and potentially a fun distraction at the office during lunch. However, it still feels kinda wrong if my PC game plays and controls like a mobile game, it just doesn't work for me.

A question the really bothers me is why is there still no free cam in this game? Heck, I can't even rotate the map anymore. You had almost 6 months to figure out how to make the camera work, why did you remove it instead? Being able to rotate the camera is an essential part of every game that involves building stuff in a 3D environment, you can't just not have this feature.

I also don't understand why you still stick to that stupid resource card mechanic, it makes no sense and takes so much potential away from this game. Instead of having your followers out there collecting resources they just stay at home while you spend your belief digging up chests. That's not what I would call innovative gameplay.
I know I am beating a really dead horse here but why don't you let our people harvest resources that they then in return need to build abodes and other stuff? Why is there no real resource system in the game? It's not like that stuff would be overly complicated to implement or way to complex to understand for casual games. We don't need whole production chains like in the Settlers or Anno games, we just need some basic stuff that gives our people a real reason to settle in certain locations.


At the end of the day, Godus 2.0 looks different than Godus 1.3.1 but it still plays quite the same. They didn't waste the past 5 months, but they also didn't really tackle the issues, they just patched the symptoms.

[John]

My verdict on Godus:
- A very poorly designed game with mobiles in mind rather than PCs by people who do not wish to improve it because that would make it less playable on mobiles. Devs are liars and deceivers, dishonest to the boot, as let me remind you there were advertising it as a PC game on kickstarter and selling it here as one while really the main goal is mobile and it's blatantly obvious.
I doubt it will succeed on mobile as well, because its very bad even by low mobile standards.