Management / Sim Godhood - create your own religion game from Abbey Games

[thesheeep]

Aaaand, it's pretty bad.
Those reviews, wow... what the hell were the devs thinking with some of that stuff?

 

[HeatEXTEND]

That blurb followed by the footage in the OP was a dead giveaway

 

[Axioms]

Those Steam reviews are brutal lol. Even recommend reviews are pretty negative. Not shocked though, these guys have never seemed to understand the point of god games. Yeah indirect control, but that doesn't excuse every single other feature...

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

https://community.abbeygames.com/threads/coming-soon-the-will-of-the-people-update.334/

Coming Soon: The Will of the People Update

• Thread starter Joni
• Start date Jul 19, 2019

...
We haven’t missed the mixed reviews and the well-considered critical feedback. Last Thursday we sat down with the entire team to distill the main issues people have with Godhood.

These are the most common points of feedback we've heard from you:

• A lack of mechanical depth in the gameplay experience; there aren’t enough strategic options and the choices that you make don’t feel meaningful enough - this also discourages multiple playthroughs.
• There are no consequences from failure and no sudden challenges to overcome.
• There is a disconnect between the fantasy of being a god and what you actually do in the game.
• The world doesn't feel alive, where you're the only active force.
• The Sacraments are unbalanced; forcing you to focus on quick, high damage, or grind for a long time.

Look forward to us working to expand and improve Godhood with these topics in mind during Early Access. We'll be starting off with...

Coming Soon: The 'Will of the People' update
This update will be focused on increasing mechanical depth, adding more challenge and raising the consequences of your actions.

• It introduces Enthusiasm, which shows how excited your worshippers are about your religion. Go out on the Sacrament while they are excited to get a boost, but wait too long with a Sacrament and the people's enthusiasm will plummet, causing bad things to happen for your religion!
• Tied to this is Tribute. Resources gathered in your temple site are placed in your tribute, and only by winning a Sacrament will you earn your (and the enemy's!) tributes. Lose, and the enemy gets their pick of your tribute...!
• We have a couple of other exciting features planned for this update. Divine intervention in the Sacrament, many more building options to expand your temple site at the cost of materials, a reworking of the Faith system, and boosting your disciples abilities for the next Sacrament, to name a few.

Expect this first Major Update to hit Early Access on August 7th!

We’re currently hard at work on this, while also adding as much new content as we can and providing support to everyone who is running into bugs or technical issues (if you have any, let us know on the forums!).

In the mean-time we’ll also keep streaming on Twitch, Youtube and Steam with Rick explaining both the game as it is now and what we’re planning on improvements. Come join in on one of these!

• July 24th, 7PM CEST: Reviewing the first two weeks of Godhood in Early Access
• July 31, 7PM CEST: Previewing changes that are in the upcoming update
• August 7, 7PM CEST: Playing the Will of the People update!

 

[Pope Amole II]

With how shitty the base game is, the only Will that's coming is Wheaton.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

https://community.abbeygames.com/threads/coming-september-4th-the-old-one-rising-update.388/

• 
  
• #1

• New Class: The Cultist
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The nefarious Cultist offers new possibilities & combos to your roster of Disciples!
  A
  
  Dark Disciple primarily focused on
  
  Knowledge &
  
  Charisma, the Cultist can Unchain allies; driving them mad and granting +25
  
  Physical Damage. However, this also clouds their allies' Minds with
  
  Unchained Madness!
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Their Words of Madness Ability deals a good amount of
  
  Morale Damage, while Corrupt Vision lowers enemies'
  
  Cunning.
  Then, use Abberant Growth to deal
  
  Nature
  
  Physical Damage, taking advantage of their
  
  Knowledge of the occult!

 

[BrotherFrank]

Allright gave this a chance, as previously stated I liked the dev's other games and respect that their games have been experimental rather then deriative.

First thought is: they released on early access too early. Damn, I had fun in my runs but looking back at the latest big updates and how they changed mechanics and balance I dread to think how the game was even just a month ago, it must have been REALLY shitty.

As it stands with the recent big update turned a non game into a game, there's actual strategy needed in terms of building your teams and developping your roster and village before you run out of crystal skulls (another new thing, I kinda hate it as feels like an artificial way of imposing a time limit but without it the game would have 0 challenge, though again makes me wonder how things were before) and I can see what they are going for in the core gameplay loop and it's not bad, just missing lots of depth.

I'm noticing a theme with these devs... They like to make their games "bite sized" in that it's beatable in a long afternoon (can clear a renowned explorer run in like 6 hours and reus has a hard time limit of line an hour or 2 if memory serves), which ain't a bad thing since their other games were highly replayable, especially RE on which I clocked an honorable 82 hours.

But godhood is far, far FAR from reaching that point yet. There's a decent variety of classes for what's available, enough to make roster building require thinking (you only have 7 slots max for disciples and there's like 9 classes? Plus disciples age so you might want to train up some younglings), find base building equally functional but spartan but what really kills it for me are lack of options for your religion and virtues/tenents. I know they just added the system (which again, makes me dread to imagine how game was like before) but if they intend this game to be replayable they are going to need a lot more then what is currently on offer, after 3 runs (1st was as a lust god, then tried madness god, ended with a war god run) I felt like I had seen everything the game had to offer already. Tenet wise there's a choice between animalism vs tribal burial and that's it, and game is short enough you will barely finish 1 tree and get half way in another before game's over. Said trees are also short (just 3-4 steps to grab every research you can). Even when they add in greed vs charity virtues, that's still not going to be nearly enough.

Otherwise the way the campaign works atm is clearly a placeholder so no comments about that other then atm it's basic: same old path each time.

Re sjw stuff: One thing I can confirm on the sjw side is that the char gen tends to give you a LOT of girly men and bearded women. Like omfg... Pretty much have to tinker with every new disciple I get to make them look like men/women. I still maintain the devs don't have an agenda and have innocent intentions but the end result of a char gen that is 100% rng is lots of bearded women and guys with effiminate looks.

Overall verdict atm: Am ambivalent. Certainly can't recommend it to any codexer in its current state and Abbey's going to have to add a lot more for the game to have replayibility. In its current form you are good for about 2 runs before games has nothing more to show you (so 6 hours-ish).

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[Dickie]

It looks like Abbey Games is going down the tubes and new features won't be added after launch.

Abbey Games is scoping down

Abbey GamesCreator
November 6, 2019

Hey young gods,

We have some sad news, unfortunately. Abbey Games is forced to scope down significantly to survive as a company and to guarantee that Godhood will be finished.

For you, our dear backers and the first to support us and Godhood, not too much will change.

Godhood will still launch out of Early Access in the first half of 2020, with a small delay on the current roadmap. We are still hard at work to make this launch the best we can make it, with our final goal being to expand the game's World Map and replayability.

All Kickstarter Rewards will also be finished by Godhood's launch. If you have any questions regarding these, definitely let us know.

For us, the hardworking monks of the Abbey, a lot is going to change.

This marks the end of an era of 8 years of Abbey Games. We will continue to put in maximum effort on Godhood's launch until December 31st, at which point all employees' contracts will be discontinued. From there the founders of Abbey Games will continue those efforts to deliver the best possible version of Godhood. Abbey Games will also continue as a publisher for all our released games, supporting Reus, Renowned Explorers & Godhood.

In the original Kickstarter pitch, we envisioned Godhood would be expanded with new content for years to come. Sadly that's not a goal we'll be able to reach. But I can say with full confidence that we're all extremely proud of what Godhood has become, and what Godhood is still going to become in the next couple months.

I want to take a moment again to thank all of you for backing Godhood when you did. Thanks for all your support, feedback and criticisms. They have, and will continue to, steer us into making Godhood the best god-game it can be.

Thanks so much,

- Rick

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/abbeygames/godhood/posts/2675354

 

[anus_pounder]

FFS. Rather than make this game, they should've done that Renowned Explorers dating sim they did a mock-up of for Aprils Fool's day.

 

[Axioms]

Well considering the game looked like trash from the word go, not shocking they screwed themselves.

 

[Chaosdwarft]

I can confirm this is is NOT A GOD GAME. It pretends to be one but you don't really feel like a god. You don't really build up your religion's tenets (sure you get to pick one at the start) like you would in CK2. You can't really interact or impact the world, just do build up your village and do battles. Heck there is no direct or indirect confrontation with other gods.

Overall it felt like the marketing was misleading. TBH if they don't finish this game, I will not be sad, because it felt more like a mobile game in it's overall design philosophy.

I loved REUS, now that felt like a god game.

 

[thesheeep]

We're totally proud of that game that we really messed up!


I get it, though, nobody likes to admit that their babies are bad and/or do not have an objective view of it and/or have no desire to develop such a view.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Someone is still working on this.

 

[Chaosdwarft]

Looks like I should give this game an other spin, it has been getting a ton of updates since the last time I played.

 

[Dickie]

Milestone #2 is out.

Hello dearest backers! Long time no see!

We've got good and exciting news on Godhood! Today we're releasing Newfound Shores, our newest Milestone update! It's out on GOG and Steam right now!

As you've noticed from the updates, we had a really rough time here at the Abbey, but we pulled through and are delivering a MASSIVE update for all of you who have the game! In this update you'll find:

• A complete redesign of many of our systems! We focused 100% on getting a fun gameplay loop in Abbey Games Style, and we think we made a huge step. As one of our testers put it ‟..I really enjoy this game and especially this new version..‟. Expect more choices, better flow and more interesting challenges!
• Go to Differently Themed Islands, all with their own false religion! Overcome their Unique Challenges and convert the people! Maybe, you'll even learn from their ways?
• Conversion in Sacraments now works differently depending on whether you go physical or morale. Morale is more likely to convert the crowd to your side, but surely knocking people out with violence is also a path to victory?
• Generosity is the new Commandment of the update! Get your Holy Cook to make a miraculous meal and share with others!
• Human Sacrifice is a newly added Tenet to spice up your religion!
• We also added a lot of the Kickstarter Backer Content, like God customization options, dedications and named disciples. Not everything is in yet, but a lot is! Check out if yours is there!
• Many More changes and fixes, like cooler miracles, more temples, a better ability category system, a first tutorial, and more!

And we're not done yet! We're still going forward to a 1.0 release! You can inspect the new roadmap here. A small selection of our plans:

• Achievements! A classic Abbey Games component!
• Consequences! Little stories and happenings that change depending on your religious choices. What will happen if you are a God of Peace... but still demand a Human Sacrifice?
• More and Better content!

We are very excited to deliver you the Newfound Shores update! You can help us develop the game further, simply by playing the game. You like what you see? Leave a review to help us spread the word! Have criticism or suggestions? PLEASE let us know! For the best chance for us to read it, post it on community.abbeygames.com or on the Steam forums. Any questions? Feel free to ask!

Why not give the new version a try? We're sure you'll find something interesting there!

- Greetings from the Monks

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

https://community.abbeygames.com/threads/update-5-righteous-rituals-has-arrived.507/

Update #5: Righteous Rituals has arrived!

Hey young gods! Hopefully you're all safe and healthy.

Today, we're happy to bring you another update for Godhood! Due to the great positive response to our last update, we've decided to supercharge our update schedule. Today, as a bit of a surprise maybe, we continue our efforts to make Godhood shine!

With this update we're further improving the quality of Godhood on all fronts, while preparing ourselves for our next big update! The key features are:

NEW FEATURES

• Ritual Customization: Help developing the rituals your Disciples choose to bring you glory, and them strength!
• Fervor: Disciple use Fervor to do missions. Carry-over HP is removed
• Martyrs: You can make your Disciples suffer for extra converts in Sacrament!
• All New Passives: A serious rehaul of the passives of ALL classes. More than 30 new passives, and countless new strategic options arise!
• Blessings: Gain one-time powers to trigger an event to change your Disciples with small stories
• Flow Improvements: We improved the way some UI changes were handled
• Assignment Faith Bonus: Every time you're in your Holy City, three random disciples will gain faith bonuses if assigned. They need to feel special!

MINOR

• Miracle buildings now scale in cost and required followers to unlock. Choose wisely!
• It's now easier to train disciples in stats for which they have talent.. and harder for those who are challenged
• You can now send old Disciples to their last pilgrimage, giving you more control over how aging affects you
• All versions of the first two islands have received a good amount of love
• Nice little connecting lines have been added to the Island Map
• Executioner now scales on Health instead of Cunning
• Cultist now scales on Might instead of Cunning
• The Patron Saint Development's options are now more expensive
• Updated the Tutorial a bit
• Special battles trigger special music!
• Disciples' clothes are now colored by their elemental attunement
• You can now inspect disciples during stories where you need to choose among them
• UI in the Sacrament was changed to make it easier to read important information

FIXED

• Altruism giving the Temple of Peace
• Cook's Nurse ability is now actually Divine
• Fixed the naming of some abilities
• Probably fixed a bug where miracles were not upgraded properly
• Fixed "Fasting" description
• Fixed issue where you couldn't pick an upgrade even when you had the resources for it
• Fixed some Passives and Totems
• Fixed many more UI issues
• You can delete incompatible Save Games again.

We will continue improving Godhood further and work on the roadmap presented before! We always appreciate your feedback, and hopefully have shown to try to work with it. You can help us out improving Godhood even more by playing the game and giving us your feedback!

We hope you'll enjoy playing this new version as much as we did!

Kind Regards,
- The monks from the Abbey

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

https://steamcommunity.com/games/917150/announcements/detail/2521402000899533615

Godhood Ascension; Rising up to 1.0!
What do we have in store for Godhood in the coming months?
Greetings, young Gods!

Our latest update was a great success! We've seldomly had so many people positively engaged with Godhood before! Thanks for all the feedback and support! We take this as an encouragement to make more interesting improvements to Godhood! So what can you expect from us in the coming months?

Moving to 1.0
After a (back-breaking!) year of Early Access, we're finally arriving at what we consider to be the premise and start point of Godhood. We set out to make an indirect, strategic game where you could create your own religion. Let's be fair, we had a false start in 2019. The game had little of our trademark depth and charm. The keen eye saw it was there, but needed a lot of attention. We thank you for your support and constructive criticism!

With your help, we really transformed the game. Now, we're getting close to that goal. With that, our next big update will be the 1.0 release! In that release we're going to deliver some cool things!

The Ending(s?)
In the next update of Godhood, you'll finally be able to finish your game of Godhood! What's more, is that there will be endings depending on your commandment and skill. How will your religion impact the future, once you've collected the Sun stones and ascend? Will they slowly forget you, but leave behind an impressive culture? Or maybe you'll pull a 2020, and call forth a nightmarish apocalypse.
In the next update, you'll finally find out what will happen!

Achievements
You might have noticed it already, but we're getting the achievements ready to roll for our next update. We'll make sure to add a few tough ones as well, just as we did with Reus and Renowned Explorers! Of course, the multiple endings will form some achievements as well.

...And More!
There will be more! A new commandment: greed, balance changes, Quality of Life improvements, and more... But we don't want to spoil all in one message! Also, we have some more exciting plans after our 1.0 release as well. Keep tuned for more Godhood news in the near future!

You're always invited to join us on Discord too! You can talk directly to us, or discuss your religion and strategies with fellow gods! We hope to see you soon!

- Greetings from the Abbey

 

[SausageInYourFace]

I still think that this will turn out a fun little god game and it's not like there are a million alternatives out there.

 

[Dickie]

1.0 version coming August 11. I barely played it because I was waiting for it to be "finished." I hope it's not terrible.

We’re almost there, gods and goddesses!

After more than a year in Early Access, we’re proud to present Godhood as a full product on the 11th of August! Let the nectar of the gods flow on that blessed day. Together with the help of some amazing players, we’re working on bringing a blast of an update to celebrate this milestone!

You can check out a few of the new features coming on our community site! It includes the glorious return of cats & dogs, as well as the final Greed Commandment!

We still have some kickstarter work to do afterwards! Most importantly, the artbook is still to be developed. We're also going to do one quick run on the high tier rewards, to make sure everything is in the game.

We again thank you for both your support and your patience. We literally couldn't have done it without you. With Godhood 1.0, you can call yourself proud patrons of a unique and interesting game. It has been an honor to develop it, and we're very proud of all the progress we've made in Early Access! Thank you again.

- Greetings from the Abbey

 

[BrotherFrank]

I played it a few times with each update and...As much as I really am cheering for Abbey because their past games have been both good and original, I am more then a little apprehensive at godhood being pushed out this early. Because make no mistake, it is being pushed out prematurely, in one of the past dev updates which might have been posted in this thread they even admitted to having financial problems that has forced them to cut short a lot of their plans for the game and accelerate the timing for release.

This might well be the death knell for the studio if game doesn't sell like hotcakes.

Anyways, one of the reasons I was able to play the game a few times with each update is because you were only allowed to do a few islands before game ends abruptly with a "more coming!" message. So people only ever played 1/4 of the game at best and feedback for it was mixed, leading to drastic changes and overhauls within the last few updates. Only with the recent update was feedback mostly positive and rather then build on that they instead wrap things up and say game is ready? Yeah I'm calling bs.

Will see how this goes.

 

[Norfleet]

This might well be the death knell for the studio if game doesn't sell like hotcakes.

You know, I've always wondered...what is a hotcake and who actually buys them?

 

[BrotherFrank]

This might well be the death knell for the studio if game doesn't sell like hotcakes.

You know, I've always wondered...what is a hotcake and who actually buys them?

Got curious enough to look it up and this page gives some satisfying answers:
https://www.bloomsbury-international.com/student-ezone/idiom-of-the-week/1758-sell-like-hotcakes/

TLDR: they are an old term for pancakes

 

[Pope Amole II]

Will see how this goes.

This probably goes nowhere. I dunno, they've mismanaged something real heavy somewhere along the way. Maybe their studio was too big in the first place and they got burnt out on salary (IIRC, they had smth like 20-ish people - that's a total overkill for the kind of games they're making), maybe they stayed too long on Renowned Explorers (I think they did 1 DLC too much, especially as they went a bit too generous on free updates and, by the time that DLC has arrived, everyone but the staunchest fans just had enough of the game), maybe they approached the Godhood itself too sloppily (or just pressed too much of their luck with it - in my opinion, they should've just sacked it and spent their final year on something else, something htat's cheap, simple and efficient in this year; the hardest kind of games to make, though). TBH, right now, it's almost impossible to make a comeback for a ded game that hasn't had much publicity in the first place, especially when the core concept and art direction are as meh as they are.

 

[JarlFrank]

FFS. Rather than make this game, they should've done that Renowned Explorers dating sim they did a mock-up of for Aprils Fool's day.

They should've done more with the Renowned Explorers concept, that's their best game, it's actually fun gameplay-wise and has some innovative ideas. Instead they went the route of experimental games low on the actual gameplay. Meh.