Godus (iOS)

Big launch yesterday : Godus for iOS. From what I have gathered (from one video interview with Peter Molyneux) it's MMO God-game. Peter Molyneux's quite the galvanizing personality in the gaming world and responsible for some great hits over the last 20 years; Populous (the first God Game, starting a genre), Syndicate and Dungeon Keeper with Bullfrog (RIP) and the Fable series and Black and White with Lionhead Studios. Godus is his new company, 22Cans' second game (the first being Curiosity – What's Inside the Cube?) and it is, as he is, quite ambitious. I booted it up yesterday (its "free") and straight away loved the visual style.

You can use your finger to stretch or shrink the layers, changing the landscape (although, unfortunately it seems that you are going to be spending most of your time trying to get everything to be flat so your followers can build something). A few times I couldn't get it to work on the iPad and the layer jumped away from me, but apparently there are still a few bugs that will soon be squashed. 

Like in previous games, you explore and learn and build - eventually you will be able to leave the island and meet other players. You get abilities for your followers with cards that unlock with stickers in small chests you find while exploring. During the first few minutes your hand is held pretty tight as you are led though a tutorial of sorts.

That world just looks great, check out those layers. I found myself wanting to see more of the world and even play this game as a RTS on my PC. Though, when it works, it works really well on the iPad. 

'Belief' (that little pink sum in the bottom left hand corner) is the currency in the game and will most likely be he reason for the IAPs - that and to speed-up build times. I look forward to playing a game that could really grow with me over time and through saving in the Cloud I could continue to play on my next device.

After what seemed like only half an hour the game was already asking me to rate the game, I felt like I had barely scratched the surface of the surface so this begging for a rating was definitely premature and I opted to do so "later." Directly after this the game surprises you with a login screen using either Mobage or Facebook (well done getting people to rate BEFORE that by the way).

After this though, the game keeps locking up on me and shutting down. I have tried a few things but it really does seem not to progress. I deleted it today and I might give it another try in a few weeks if I hear of some updates. Too bad, it looked really good and I want to know what all the fuss it about - I am still sad that I missed Curiosity, so I don't want to miss another!