Gods Will Be Watching

Who lives and who dies? Do you feed your team or push them through the night to repair the radio you so desperately need in order to call for help. On the surface Gods Will Be Watching appears to be a stylized adventure game centered around making critical decisions in difficult situations. In reality Gods is actually a painstakingly methodical resource management simulator, dressed up with some wonderful pixel art and an intriguing plot. Following the story of sergeant Burden, you’re tasked with dismantling the terrorist organization Xenolifer which is led by the idealistic Liam. This group of revolutionaries oppose the enslavement of alien races and will go to great lengths in order to achieve their goals - even if that means killing millions of innocent people. The story unfolds through seven chapters, each uncovering a bit of the story through small cutscenes. There is no voice acting to speak of so everything you learn is done so through speech bubbles before, during and after each mission, cluing you in to the world politics and motivations of the characters you encounter. Although fairly straightforward at first, there is more depth here than one would initially assume.

Each chapter of Burdens story introduces the player to a unique area with a limited number of actions such as gathering firewood, charging a battery or yelling at some hostages. Each action takes a turn and you usually have a limited number of these to accomplish your goal. For example one such scenario has the team stranded on a planet and tasked with enduring a set number of days while simultaneously fixing a broken radio and managing team morale. Do you spend your turn on hunting or fixing the radio? Do you talk to someone or risk asking them to work instead? Each move you make is like a small gear in a great clock the moves the hands a little bit forward. Under constant threat of an impending deadline, you have to always think several moves ahead in order to survive.

Ddespite the gorgeous art, great soundtrack and novel approach to storytelling, the gameplay is simply not that fun. Half the game is spent probing at the solution to each “puzzle” through an arduous process of trial and error, while the other is persevering through the monotonous grind once you do discover the correct sequence. Difficulty is all over the place and with no real tutorial you're expected to hit the ground running but most people will end up falling flat on their face repeatedly with no real guidance on how to improve. Each chapter overstays it’s welcome many times over without introducing any new or interesting elements - and it’s not uncommon to be left repeating the same tasks over and over again for dozens of turns at a time. The one interesting mechanic is a Walking Dead styles summary screen a the end of each mission letting you know how your decisions stacked up against other players. Even then, your “decisions” are largely without meaning as characters can die in any one chapter with no real consequence or bearing on the story.

If the act of discovery was fun the trial and error aspect of gameplay wouldn’t be an issue. The problem is that it’s not especially fun nor engaging and GWBW is perfectly ok with irreversibly wasting your time until you get the patterns down right. There is no saving, there are no checkpoints, you can be 40 minutes into a chapter and one wrong move can mean replaying the whole scenario from scratch. The only time the game saves is between chapters, forcing you to click through the same intro each and every time you have to restart. Since a lot of elements are randomized it’s often hard to even learn from your mistakes. When you do finally get the patterns down it’s no longer a race with the clock but a battle with attrition as you become painfully aware just how long you’ll have to repeat the same handful of actions over and over again until the end of the chapter. The missions themselves also lack any real variety as once you discover what it is you need to do it’s the same gameplay loop from beginning to the very end. The one time the game does introduce a new factor mid-mission during chapter 3 it’s a moment of incredible frustration rather than a clever gameplay twist.

For a story driven game a big issue is that you quickly stop seeing the characters or narrative at all. You anxiously click through everything just to push things along. Any semblance of atmosphere washes away and only symbolic stamina bars remain. Get the wood, make the fire, fix the radio, talk to Jack, talk to Jack again, click click click click lets go lets go 15 turns to go. There is nothing really fun about this process. The developers almost beg you to play the game on the original difficulty instead of an easier mode which seems cruel and pointless. There is nothing to be gained through playing the game on Original mode apart from unlocking some concept art. Gods May Be Watching seems like a really interesting concept that failed to evolve into a proper retail product. Instead of building on the original idea and expanding it, we get 7 more nearly identical prototypes strung together with some questionable narrative.

Is Gods Will Be Watching a good game? No. It’s not especially fun to play and it’s not difficult in an interesting or creative way. Yet there is something there, a kernel of ingenuity that sadly got lost somewhere along the way to becoming a full retail product. The artwork is simply beautiful and each area is rendered with such detail that you could get lost in observing the scenery alone. All the characters have a wonderful fluidity to their movement and exhibit personality that is often lost these days despite the millions of polygons and shader effects. Deconstructeam is obviously a talented team of individuals with some daring new ideas. While I would only recommend purchasing GWBW at a steep discount for the novelty factor, I think everyone should definitely keep their eyes out for any future releases from this developer.