Creo God Simulator Preview for Steam Early Access

Ever looked at a nation’s history and thought “well, I could do a better job than that”? Think you’re the most important person around and that others should come to you for their problems? Have you ever smited anybody with your nigh-omnipotent powers? While others may have called you a narcissist, you may just be a Creostrider, a being with the power to commune with the natural magic of the planet itself. In Creo God Simulator, you take on the role of one such Creostrider as you attempt to grow a thriving city through the power of economy, resource management and faith.

As the founder of your new nation, you are in charge of its many affairs and must place down buildings within the radius of your central tower from which your divine energy flows. It’s up to you to set up housing, food production, lumber gathering, mining, ore processing and more. That may sound like a lot, but as a god among men you have no time for such menial tasks and instead can designate those jobs to the population of your nation. Of course, if you want to speed up the process of construction (which is especially advisable before being able to assign builders to do so instead), you can channel others’ Faith in your power to help these mere mortals along. After beginning resource production, you can place down markets to begin global commerce and to generate gold. But your power extends far beyond the affairs of the state: while aimlessly wandering throughout your settlement, your people may occasionally offer you a prayer which you can answer by clicking on them. Doing so produces some faith, allowing you to perform more divine abilities.

As you grow in power, you can spend your Faith to unlock the secrets of both science and magic to better your civilization: instead of extending your city into a nearby forest  or ore deposit with costly shrines, you can summon the elements yourself and spread nature with your fingertips. Or you could also unlock bigger farms or better altars to store your Faith at, which is far less impressive but still as important. Alongside your unlockable new powers, you also start with the ability to summon rain to any location, boosting crop production at will, and to smite your town’s residents. Whether you choose to be revered or feared is entirely up to you.

The game has a very strong foundation for gameplay, and first-time developer MKSM Design LLC is fully committed to updating, improving and refining the game over time. This is especially visible in their most recent update for the game which coincided with its exit from early access and into beta. This update changes the game by adding in quests for you to complete, which can be story-based or randomly created by your citizens, and pieces of history for you to find that tell the larger narrative of the history of Creo and its many civilizations. The game is very ambitious and has much promise, with an in-depth system contrasting Faith management and resource management, the hidden secrets of the world you inhabit, and a randomized map for each new game you play that can be almost entirely adjusted beforehand.

However, the game does have very prevalent weaknesses that are in need of addressing. Fortunately, some of these are already currently being worked on by the developers, who maintain a vocal presence in the game’s community. However, some other changes and adjustments are necessary to improve the game beyond their currently announced scope. As an example, the early game is extremely difficult to actually progress in, frequently requiring you to just sit and wait to gather resources so that you can place down a building that gathers those exact same resources. I often found myself completely out of wood before having the opportunity to place down a lumber mill, making me wait on extremely slow basic resource generation, the restocking of markets to trade for more, or for the arrival of a quest I could complete that rewarded me with some. Another issue with buildings at the moment is that they simply take too long to be constructed, especially before you build a construction building. You can speed up the building process by spending Faith, but you generate faith at such a miniscule rate that you’re better off just waiting.

All of these can, and no doubt will, be fixed relatively easily with future updates: increasing the base generation rate of all resources, especially faith, will speed up the process of actually setting up your town and give you more Faith to throw around playing the part of a God. Additionally, the planned tower-defense elements will give your city more buildings to place, a reason to place things more strategically, and most importantly rewards for defending your people. In all honesty, the planned content is not only exciting but also necessary for the game itself, especially in the long term. As it stands, Creo God Simulator is a good foundation from which a great game will hopefully arise in time. Currently the game is still growing to become everything that it wants to be, and it can be seen and felt in the gameplay. However, it has an incredible amount of heart that is evident in its polish and presentation, and I do not doubt that the developers will deliver on every promise while taking feedback and improving the experience. Keep an eye on Creo God Simulator, because much like your civilizations in game, it’s going to develop and evolve into something bigger than you could have predicted. You’ve just gotta have a bit of Faith.

Creo God Simulator is available for PC via Steam Early Access.

Related: Reviews by Aaron Grossmann