I could love this game so easily. First off I enjoy God Games in general; Populous used to be my first exposure and remained my favourite for a long time. Secondly, the art is funky, and the creatures all make appropriate noises. Seriously, that really adds to the amount of fun I have with a game. It's also a Goldilocks game for me -- not too simple, but also not overwhelmingly complicated, so it's just right for those times when my brain isn't necessarily at its best, but I am not ready to go to bed yet, and I want something more interesting than point-and-click, yet Civilization is way too demanding.

The game has a lot of options, which I also enjoy -- you can play in story mode, where you can choose from 5 different missions, starting quite easily and ending with a real challenge. Or you can play in survival mode, with 3 different difficulty options plus complete customization. It is possible to play the game 100% peacefully, no pests, no enemies, no disasters at all, which is also something I prize when I want to relax. And you can make it unbearably hard on yourself, so there's definitely a lot of replay value here.

So why am I not recommending it? I want to! The developers generally did a pretty good job, and I like to reward that, especially with so many games on Steam that are abandonware.

For one, it's aggravating that the AI is not smart enough. Mims don't seek rejuvenation in their house when they most need it, especially guardians who have nothing to do but guard the place. And yet, they don't recoup their energy easily enough, which means I have to micromanage constantly. Mims who get hurt badly don't march straight for home either, and can easily die on you ("too stupid to live" comes true). I ended up choosing a custom game with only the meekest pest at a low rate of invasion simply so I could figure out where the AI fell flat on its face, and alas there are many places. And while I can micromanage rejuvenation and attacks on pests/enemies, I cannot make my Mims cut down vegetation; I have to burn it, and the burn rate is not high enough at the start to deal with the regrowth rate.

That alone wouldn't cause me to recommend against a game; I'd put up with that, because it is of course its own challenge to figure out a way to win within a game's constraints. I find methodical analysis and trial building fun in its own way.

But here's the deal breaker:

You cannot save in this game. And it doesn't even warn you that it doesn't auto save; when you leave, that is it, your game is gone and you have to start over. You can't set up two different scenarios, compare them, and tweak each. If you want to spend some time carefully fine tuning your game's economy, you have to basically remain logged into it for days. Which totally distorts your hours spent, aside from taking up memory from other games you might want to play or from actual work. And if your computer crashes, it's all for naught anyway. If you build a masterpiece of Mims civilization, better screen print it and then kiss it goodbye, because there is no return to old glories.

So I am sorry, but I cannot recommend it. If this doesn't bother you, by all means, I think it's well worth buying even at full price, because you can get many hours of gameplay out of it if you just don't leave the game. But for me, this is a death knell for a game; I lose all interest if I can't save my work to get back to it later.

I was pretty excited to see a god game pop up on steam. Ever since Populus on the Amiga I've loved the genre but The Mims misses the mark for me.

Each mission takes place on a floating island, each of which contains new dangers to overcome. The developers have clearly made an effort to give the game a semblence of plot although the transitions between missions feel a bit sudden with no real explanation of why the little aliens are choosing the next landmass or what happened to everything you left behind on the last one.

The gameplay for the most part is fairly simple. Plants generate fruit, fruit gives you biomass and feeds your livestock and selling your animals gives you gems. Both gems and biomass can be used to build and upgrade structures to further advance your camp with gems generally being your bottleneck.

Trying to over extend your production of fruit or livestock will result in pests coming to eat your resources or hostile life being attracted to your island which will attack your animals and Mims. You need to balance production to minimise threats. This system of discouraging over production is a really nice mechanic.

Sadly, the good news stops there. The AI and some game mechanics feel poorly optimised which leads to more frustration than fun.

Mims get tired as they work and will need to rest up in a house to get their energy back. On one level, despite having one house for every two Mims they just refused to rest regularly. My guardians, essential for defense of my village are particularly guilty of not resting up when they have the chance and are frequently all out of energy when I most need them.

Despite being told early on that my Mims love nature, destroying trees is often the only viable way to get enough building space. I could overlook the backstory hole here is the process of removing foliage wasn't so painful in it's own right; setting fire to some of the bigger trees just reduces their size, usually requiring three bursts of flame to get the job done. The trees will grow back a bit though so if anything interrupts your pyromania while your Psi power build up (like needing to heal some guardians) you'll find the tree back to full height before you can have another go.

Plants can be a source of annoyance in other ways too. Several of the fruit providing plants will throw their finished product across the island and despite my best efforts to ensure that they're aimed at a building or that they have plenty of space for the fruit to land, I frequently find my new fruit tree throwing their resources off the edge of the island.

A little trial and error with placement of my plants could maybe be forgiven if it was at least possible to sell my plants back or reposition after they've grown but this is sadly not possible.

The final straw for me though is the lack of a save feature. Missions aren't particularly quick to complete and I've had a couple of occasions now where I've had to stop playing mid mission for one reason or another and have to abandon my progress.

Overall it's a game with some neat ideas and potential to be fun but seriously marred by it's shortcomings.

The Mims Beginning is a breath of fresh air in an increasingly stagnate gaming pool. At first glance, the game may look light and simple but very quickly you begin to see that this is a deep, well-designed strategy/god-mode game. The graphics are very detailed, the artwork is beautiful, the mechanics are flawless. If you think that because its a god-mode strategy game that it will be boring, then guess again. There is plenty of action/activities to keep you busy without having to micro-manage your units and economy. Research will increase the options and powers available during gameplay while continuing to upgrade and expand your alien colony. For any strategy gaming fan, I strongly recommend picking this game up. Most games are only moderately worth their sale prices, especially indie games. But this game is well worth the full price.

The big name gaming developers should take a few lessons from the Squatting Penguins Studio. This is how a game is supposed to be released. Out-of-the-box, ready to play. 100+ hours of gameplay and I have yet to experience a single bug. No glitches in gameplay, no graphics hiccups or units falling through maps, no game crashes. The game runs smooth and seamlessly like any released game should. Even more amazing is that this is still an early-access game so bugs and glitches are normally accepted and typically expected. A lot of care and effort went into this release and true gamers will notice and appreciate it right away.

Without going into a lengthy game description, The Mims Beginning will have the typical RTS simulation components, but with its own distinct approach. Expect a well-balanced economic system, a rich story to tie the campaign missions together nicely, an assortment of interesting buildings and units to build as you establish your camps, and a variety of research.

The one area that is lacking when compared to most games of this genre is the variety of units. In this game, you have only a couple of types to choose from. The basic, or generic Mim performs assorted tasks as you assign them rather than being specialized. Perhaps in the future more unit types will be added, but the game functions just fine with the current unit structure. The developer has stated that more features and game modes will be added as development progresses. As for the game's mechanics and features, here are some things that you should know:

+ Graphics are top-notch and run flawlessly even on the highest settings. Great detail and color
+ Absence of bugs/crashes (Makes a game much more enjoyable)
+ Gameplay is rich and deep with a clever resource economy and challenging goals
+ Learning curve is acceptable for beginners and an in-depth tutorial campaign is included
+ Camera controls are included and easy to use while navigating the maps
+ Although this is a God-mode game, autonomy option is able to be turned off when desired
+ Simple game controls / Window mode available if desired
+ Well-developed story for the campaign mode

- No save feature included in current release
- Limited options for adjusting graphics in the event your system has trouble running the game
- Window mode is restricted to specifically selected screen resolutions only.
- Currently not a lot of replay value (likely to change in the final version with Survival Mode)
- The AI for units is sometimes frustrating as they seem to wander aimlessly about rather than perform their assigned tasks (possibly by design?)

Keep in mind that at the time of this review, the game is still in Early Access beta and will likely improve and include more features. Considering that, this game is very impressive. At first glance it looks like its going to be some simple cartoon-ish indie that will fill an hour or two of free time. But nothing could be further from the truth. Hours of challenging and entertaining gameplay awaits and a good bit of light humor is mixed into the storyline as well. Rarely do I enjoy an early access game this much. I anxiously await the final release.


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Fun game but the fact that you cannot save mid-mission is silly... Not recommended to anyone who does not have hours to play at a time.

Another stalled out early access disappointment with a developer ignores or outright argues with feedback.

Gets a lot of the "standard" stuff wrong (horrible camera/controls, no ability to save the game...) without bringing anything new to the table other than some cute graphics.

Update: Just updating now that this is out of early access to say that nothing has changed. According to the developers: "Maybe in AAA games mid save game is standard this is why people are accustomed to this option."

TL;DR: Supremely average game which you should only bother with if, like me, you were jonesing for a god game and are ready to be disappointed.

I won't whinge about the lack of a save-game function, nearly everyone else has done so and I have to agree with them. Its an RTS and it needs a save game, lets be honest.

What I will whinge about is the mechanics of the game. You're a god that has little to no control over what's going on, you have to spend your time micromanaging the stupidest details of the game, e.g., using your godly powers to exterminate worms from eating your fruit. Your direct control over the Mims is minimal and whatever AI they're driven by is poor enough to frustrate you while you wait around for resource-collection whereby they collect bananas from around the island for the central-juicer.

The plot is meh, the 'humour' is of the terrible teletubbies variety, and the gameplay is largely about resource management with little reward.

This is no way comparable to Populous or Blank-n-White and balancing your banana and astro-chicken output with the impeding worm-infestation probability isn't strategy, its accounting.

A funny and cute god/strategy game with missions and a survival mode, clearly made with a lot of love. The tutorial was good, and as a left-handed player I didn't run into any problems (left-handed mouse works fine and the right-side keys I prefer do as well).

Two big cons:
- Can't save in the middle of a mission, and you don't know in advance how long a mission takes. (I'm too old for long playing sessions, and my kid who likes to play this with me, is too young.)
- The swaying main menu which gives me instant motion sickness. What were they thinking?!

Overall: 3/5.

TLDR at the bottom - The Mims Beginning is a game that mixes city building elements with some aspects of god games and plays in real time. You play as the first deity that the Mims, a strange and cute looking alien race, encounters after they crash land on a series of floating islands while fleeing their doomed homeworld.


The game starts you off with a pretty decent tutorial that teaches you the basics while leaving room for discovery as you play, either through survival or story mode. At its core, the game might seem some somewhat complicated at first but, once you get the hang of the major mechanics you’ll see that it isn’t that complicated at all, but it does offer some degree of challenge and requires you to plan on how you expand and what you choose to build and research. You have to keep a steady supply of biomass, which you can get from certain plants, energy to power your buildings and gems, which you can get either by selling adult animals to offworld marketplaces or by finding them in each level.

That said, there is one complaint I have about this and that is the fact that to construct buildings and create certain units you’ll need gems. The thing is that these gems are limited in quantity and you can get yourself in a position where you’ll have to restart the entire mission. Yes, the entire mission, because unfortunately the game doesn’t have a save function. One time I lost about an hour of gameplay because of miscalculation of resources. Still, that was a one case scenario and usually missions are shorter than that.

While most of the game relies on autonomous actions from your Mims to gather resources and ensure that your settlement keeps on going, you also get to play an active role on this process. You can use various powers to boost your Mims or to protect them from dangers such as, creating fire or giving your Mims a boost in speed, health and energy, but you’re also able to directly control individual Mims such as warriors and some “hero” units. While you’re actively trying to protect your settlement from pests and predators, combat doesn’t really play a huge role like in other RTS. The game presents some pretty well thought mechanics such as pests, catastrophes and predators which some are triggered based on the smell of your settlement (for real) and things like the amount of livestock that you have at any given time. You can actually research some technologies that allow you to predict when these will happen, which is shown in a bar at the bottom of the screen.


In terms of actual story, usually at the beginning of each mission and sometimes when a certain event is triggered, there are some the conversations between characters presented in the form of cutscenes, which unfortunately are not voice acted, but the dialogue still manages to pull out some nice humour. The story is well presented both visually and in terms of narrative, right at the start it kind of teases you what happened that led the Mims to have to flee their planet, which kept me interested in going on, and it also introduces you to some unique characters that help shape the story and add character to these little folks.

One thing I must say is that performance is somewhat of a hit or miss. The game is not really quite the looker (aesthetically I think it looks good, what I mean is in terms of graphical fidelity by todays standards) but the Mims themselves look rather nice and the buildings have this sort of steampunk look to them which I find to be rather appealing.


Overall, despite the major flaw which I consider to be the lack of a save function, The Mims Beginning managed to surprise me. It mixes elements from god games and city building/management and puts them in a world where you have to look out after this little tribe while helping them restore their former glory. If you’re a fan of god games I highly recommend you check this one out.

It is an ok and interesting game. But with out a save feture you better have a hour or more to spend in the game to get to the next mission.

No Save

I wish I would have read reviews before buying.