Godhood Early Access Preview

Godhood isn’t the first project with which developer Abbey Games tries its hand at answering the question of what it would feel like to be a god. Previously, Reus offered a side-scrolling take on the god game genre, and did so to great effect. This time around, although the premise puts players in the shoes of a, theoretically, almighty deity, Godhood doesn’t quite follow in the footsteps of Populous and its peers, tackling a different gameplay recipe.

Godhood has two main components: one that focuses on managing and growing your followers’ village, another that consists of 3v3 automated battles, called Sacraments, where your Disciples square off against others in nearby villages. That being said, you can’t have followers without setting the bases of your own religion first. You can choose names for it, yourself and your followers, but also its central Commandment. This is the main pillar of your religion, the four current choices allowing you to pick between War, Peace, Lust and Chastity. Your chosen Commandment grants different bonuses during Sacraments but also a special resource you can pursue later down the line.

All your followers gather in a village which you can expand with the passage of time. It’s here where you can have your Disciples perform Rituals, which result in collecting various resources. These resources can then be put to use towards performing or upgrading Miracles, which level up your Disciples, alongside a number of other activities. You can queue up to three actions and need to allow time to pass in order for them to complete. Currently, Godhood tracks time in years, each made of three seasons, but aside from advancing your village, the passage of time brings about little else. It’s true that I did get notified about one of my Disciples growing old but that didn’t feel like it impacted anything else. Not only that, but tasking your Disciples to collect pots used in Miracles over and over quickly becomes monotonous.

You can only build new buildings at specific points in time, mostly as your God Level grows, which results in gameplay characterized by a fairly glacial pace. Similarly, Sacraments put emphasis on matching the right Disciples and countering your opponent’s. As new additions to your roster also come in rather slowly, you’re left feeling like there’s currently little wiggle room. Given how there are twelve classes of Disciples, each with its associated damage type, role and abilities, I’m willing to speculate that this might happen because of the game just being launched in Early Access, though.

Due to the hands off nature of the Sacraments, player input currently resumes to choosing the three combatants that enter the duels. While each has stats and abilities to consider, it’s fairly difficult to gauge how they’re going to impact the fight due to their seemingly random nature. Luckily, each Disciple’s class is attuned to an element which has clear weaknesses and strengths, becoming the main decider when choosing your party. Even then, though, the limited pool of available Disciples makes it hard to find the proper counters all the time which can result in repeating Sacraments over and over until you get lucky with your attack rolls.

As they take part in Sacraments, Disciples level up, unlocking active and passive abilities that tighten their synergy with certain teammates. Certain passives give you a free attack once an enemy or ally attuned to a specific element performs a move or is simply part of the battle. But while I can see what Godhood is trying to get at, it’s simply too hands-off at the moment. I often found myself alt-tabbing out, especially during Sacraments. When you know you won’t be able to influence the fight in any way once it’s started, there has to be something else that keeps you interested in watching it unfold. At the moment, however, Sacraments lack detailed animations or funny retorts, making them an absolute drag after a rather short while.

Winning Sacraments often rewards new followers or even Relics which can be used to boost rituals, miracles or Disciples. As you gain followers you increase your God Level, which gives you more Worshipper support (a resource pool which decides how many Disciples can be active at one time) and actions such as building a sacrificial temple. While leveling up definitely adds to what you can do during the village segment, I never quite felt like I’m leading a flock of devout followers towards a certain philosophy. Needless to say, my time as Wooblyboi, god of Lust, had very little to do with excess and quite a bit with assigning what ended up feeling like repetitive chores to a slowly growing roster of Disciples.

Early Access titles are by definition incomplete, but Godhood comes forth with an unfortunate mixture of hands-off gameplay, glacial progress pace and unwelcome repetition. It’s not hard to notice that it wants you to care for each of your Disciples (but seemingly not for the other followers wandering aimlessly around the village), but I found it hard to even remember their names, despite watching them fight in plenty of Sacraments. The religion customization aspect only has a light impact on gameplay at the moment, neither managing to create a discernible identity for your religion, nor telling a compelling story. As it steps into Early Access, Godhood finds itself short on both variety and flavor, having a fair bit of work to do before it manages to make players feel anything like gods.

Bogdan Robert, NoobFeed
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