Godhood Isn’t Exactly Divine In Its Reckoning – Preview

Automation does not a Godhood make.

Abbey Games’ Godhood starts with one disciple banished from a religion by their elders for believing something different and, as it turns out, all it takes to get a religion started is one committed stray spreading their belief. Godhood was Kickstarted on March 2019 and launched onto Steam Early Access on July 10, 2019.

What would you name your religion if given the opportunity? My creativity went as far as creating the Tunnel Snakes. You may have heard of them or their God, Butch DeLoria. If not, you should play the beginning of Fallout 3. The Tunnel Snakes in Fallout 3 were bullies and I figured I would lead with that idea in creating my Godhood religion.

The game starts with customizing the aesthetic of your God and what their followers will believe in. I picked the War commandment described as, ‘Might is right! Your followers will prove their faith in you through blood and victory!’ The War commandment alongside a snake God can only lead to one design. A combination of a slithery body, reptilian head, and a large sword.

That’s how the Tunnel Snakes went from a greaser gang in Fallout 3 to a religious cult in Godhood. Unfortunately, once you get past creating your symbol and name customization starts to fall short.

As the days progress in-game, your religion grows through different stages – from a small gathering to a large cult. While it’s satisfying to watch as new temples and structures expand your camp, your religion often feels automated due to most of the gameplay taking place without your interaction. Your disciples fight in combat without you and the success of their rituals are a dice roll.

The Tunnel Snakes slowly but surely continued to grow from one banished follower to several hundred. Every 20 in-game days, a group of disciples rises from the gathering of followers to become warriors for the religion. The pool of disciples have randomized stats and don’t have much going for them until you train them. They’re almost as useless as the followers they came from until they get their class through battle.

Godhood’s combat system revolves around five elements; Dark, Nature, Life, Divine, and Ancestral. Each class has an element they’re resistant against and one they’re vulnerable to, essentially creating a reliance on rock, paper, scissors mechanics. I thought the class system would be another opportunity to customize my characters to feel like Tunnel Snakes. Because of the way combat is built, it doesn’t make sense to customize your characters by class or element.

It’s a weird dynamic where the classes can be what makes your religion unique. But simultaneously, the game discourages you from selecting one type because you’ll be hindered against elements countering you. Every class falls into the normal roles you’d see in an RPG(Damage, Healer, Tank), but Abbey Games tries to give it some flair.

The first commandment you choose pushes you toward choosing certain classes. And yet, you’ll suffer if you build toward predominantly those classes for the benefit of a stat bonus. Godhood frequently feels like it can’t make up its mind on what you’re supposed to do. If you choose the Peace commandment, you might want a Songsmith because they’re peaceful in their abilities, but going all-in on that element would render you vulnerable to pretty much any other attack.

The strategy in Godhood is less in using the elements and simply about getting the first attack with the biggest stick. After winning in six hours, my disciples were all the same element and class. They won every fight because they had a high cunning stat to attack first and enough might to win before the opponent could react. When combat is automated, there’s only so much room outside battle for playing a role in what your religion becomes.

Past versions of the game had small forms of interaction with battles, known as Sacraments. Godhood’s current state no longer has that interaction and now has the game take full control of your disciples right after you choose them for battle. Godhood developer, Rick Sorgdrager recently responded to a forum user saying it’s more about being a presence as a God. A God in Godhood is along for the ride, rather than controlling how every encounter unravels.

“We always wanted Godhood to be less about being an all-powerful force of nature, and more about being a presence that influences and guides a religion,” Sorgdrager replies. “Because of that, we decided to personify your religion through the disciples.”

The main area you control is the day to day tasks of your disciples. As your religion grows in size, the game unlocks its potential by giving you different structures for your followers to perform rituals at. These rituals are used to gain different currencies in order to upgrade both themselves and their religion. This, however, quickly devolves into a repetitive selection of one of three tasks for every ritual, every five minutes. As goes with most mechanics in Godhood, there isn’t a whole lot going on here.

On top of the resource management, each disciple has a Sims-like mood meter on how faithful they are in their God or Goddess. Recruiting new followers through rituals can make them happy while losing a battle can break their faith. It’s a small part of Godhood to manage, but it plays a role in how well they perform rituals. A disciple without faith is more likely to lead a group of followers to their death than successfully gather a large amount of offerings.

Each day only three of seven disciples can perform rituals. After choosing those rituals, it’s time to open up the world map and explore opportunities to expand. The Tunnel Snakes began by converting the unguided through war and eventually converting other religions through their second commandment, Lust. By the time I unlocked the second commandment I already won the game. This is another area where Godhood continues to hurt itself. I don’t know if I beat the game too quick or if the pacing is too slow, but I never got to use my new commandment.

I cleared every area on the world map for new followers and the only way I could unlock content for my Lust commandment was through performing rituals to sluggishly gather followers. There’s little impetus to continue playing once the content has run dry. I gathered the followers anyway so I could unlock a Festival of Lust, another way for my disciples to upgrade their stats. Now they can proceed to do nothing since I already won.

The few areas where Abbey Games attempts to offer customization and strategy are shot down by their own mechanics. A recent update shows they’re aware of these issues from feedback and are trying to adapt to them. Hopefully, later on in development, features like these elements will have more value to them. There is room for creating interesting builds by synergizing classes together, Godhood just needs to mature into it.

In a nutshell, Godhood has potential and the developer is open to feedback in realising that potential. As of right now, it feels like it’s trying to be a jack of all trades, but is in reality a master of none.