Delectable Deities: Reus Puts God Back In The God Game
Hallelujah! Just look at Reus, the prettiest game I've seen allllll year. I'd probably be willing to make that statement in February, btw. Come March I'll reevaluate. Reus is a God game where you play a huge God, hunkered down over the world like a child over his toys, plucking at the malleable world and moulding it. The trailer is below, and I insist you watch it right away.
I just love the aesthetics, which are a product of the developers Abbey Games: "Wouldn’t it be awesome to control a titan as such, and model the landscapes to your liking?" The answer appears to be *fistbump*.
You control a giant that can change the planet's landscape, grasping stone in the giant rock creature's arms to make mountains, or pounding the ground to create waterways with the crab's claws. The creatures seem to have very specific roles to play in the land-scaping. There's another woodsy fellow walking around that I imagine does amazing things with forests.
Like all god botherers, the game is eventually about the relationship that develops with the humans that inhabit the land, balancing their wants and needs. According to a devblog just posted: "With prosperity comes power. If the humans gain too much power too fast, they don’t know what to do with it and become obsessed with it. Large civilization might start wars to gain more land. Wealthy civilization might become recklessly greedy. Advanced civilization might trigger mishaps with their curiosity. So what do you do when the greedy civilization starts to destroy the adorable balanced civilization, and you have all the powers of nature? THAT’S RIGHT, YOU HURL HURRICANES AND ROCKS AT THEM!! A more subtle way of dealing with these problems is by placing natural danger to temper the growth of civilizations. Just add a bunch of lions to the land, and the greedy civilization will be to busy dealing with lions to start a pillage somewhere else."
That sounds hilarious. There's a lot more in the blog about the challenges of balancing playing as an actual God, and how to balance their powers, but I'll send you there rather than recap it because it has some brilliant MS Paint art examples to go along with the words.
But this looks lovely, and the notion of Gods crouching behind the world, watching their creations, has gotten me very intrigued. And excited. Excitrigued!