From Cities Skylines 2 to Satisfactory, overwhelming the natural order with your ever-expanding urban sprawl and exploiting its resources for your gain is a wonderfully satisfying experience. But what happens when nature fights back? The answer is Gods Against Machines, a new roguelike and reverse city-builder where you’re a vengeful god protecting the world from a machine race as it plays its own strategy game on your land. As it prepares to launch, you can try it right now with a free Steam demo.
In Gods Against Machines, you are the gods – or one of them, as you choose from four different deities to defend your planet against a series of relentless robots attempting to do their best Command and Conquer all over your nice natural habitats. In this roguelike game, you’ll have to take on increasingly tough attacks, each one you fend off awarding you with a choice of new spells to learn, upgrades to claim, and resources to improve your own power level even further along with those of Gaia, Mother Nature herself, who also lends you her aid as you progress.
The four gods each represent an element, with their own strengths and weaknesses to match. Azzinoth’s fire is all about raw destructive power, able to demolish entire outposts in seconds. Water goddess Nadea slows and delays the machines while she builds up to her signature Rising Tide, which floods the land and devastates the enemy buildings. Earth god Urus can call upon all manner of giants and animal spirits to aid in battle. Finally, Zafira brings her wind powers to the table, but is capable of trickery such as borrowing other powers and taking control of her enemies.
The more enemies expand and carve up your environment for their own resources, the more their corruption spreads across the land. You’ll need to protect the crystals that generate your mana, which is used to cast all your spells. These range from direct attacks like meteor storms to slower-burn damage over time effects, but also offer you ways to summon creatures or cleanse corruption manually. At certain times, you’ll also be able to call on powerful spirits that appear that can aid you in your struggle.
Gods Against Machines launches Monday, February 26 on Steam. If you’re curious but want to try it out for yourself before buying, you can do so right now thanks to a prologue available as a free Steam game. It lets you try out two of the four gods up to level 12 in its campaign mode, with access to over three dozen spells, more than 50 blessings, and three of the nine Gaia powers.
Alternatively, if you’re more in the mood to be that troublemaker, we have the best city-building games in 2024, along with even more of the best strategy games.
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