Godus is out on Early Access; here’s our Godus review.
This is quite extraordinary. 22cans have pushed out Godus 2.0 today – their first update since the game was uploaded to Steam Early Access in October. And with it they’ve posted a video in which Peter Molyneux – accompanied by a minion making noises of agreement – says sorry for the sorry state Godus was released in.
When Godus was first pitched on Kickstarter, the promise was that players would enjoy reshaping an environment to new ends; the fact that they didn’t has meant their feedback has “literally reshaped” the nature of the game.
In the first part of the video, Molyneux attempted to account for the long wait between Godus’ October release and its update today.
“This is the honest answer,” he said. “We collated all of your feedback and realised we needed to make these vast changes to the game. We needed to make it because of the feedback we got from you.”
Molyneux said that beta players had condemed the game as a “clickfest”, complained of a lack of variation, and worried that they didn’t know what they were doing or why. What’s more, 22cans noticed that few players were sticking with the story mode or multiplayer.
“So we went back to the drawing board on the foundation stones of our features,” said Molyneux. “The reason we did that is that we really, truly wanted to make a great game. It has taken us the whole of November, the whole of December, the whole of January, and the whole of February to get the game into a state where we feel happy with it.”
Previously implemented features like battles, meteors and the entire story mode have been stripped from Godus pending a time they’re “up to the quality of the new refinements”.
Molyneux rubbed his hands together and sighed as Curiosity designer Jack Attridge continued: “It was a choice of doing these trivial updates, where we could be producing content but the same flaws would be there. Whilst there would be more to play with, there would still be the same grievances. So this was the only way.”
Godus 2.0 introduces a new hold-and-drag system of interaction which necessitates “less clicking”. It incorporates more accurate and responsive land-sculpting, and a new follower command tool to replace the totem, called the ‘leash’.
There’s a new game mode in Voyages of Discovery – a timed Lemmings-like in which you guide followers across unfamiliar terrain – and new god powers in the form of tree-planting and rain.
Elsewhere, there’s a more intuitive interface, re-engineered follower behaviour, and a “complete redesign” of the card system in which players choose which cards to unlock.
Were any of you lot Kickstarter backers for Godus? If so, is there enough, ah, belief left in you to boot it up one more time?