I’ve been forced to invent new expletives in order to adequately express the boiling rage I feel every time this game defeats me–which is pretty often. To be fair, I skipped playing Easy Mode and went straight to Normal Mode. What an idiot I am. Gods Will Be Watching tells you right from the very beginning that you’re going to fail. A lot. Knowing that in advance might seem like it would reduce the stress and frustration, but it doesn’t. The weird part? I can’t stop playing it.
An Addicting and Brutally Difficult Game
As someone who likes to take their time with a game, I find the fact that Gods Will Be Watching is a point-and-click game to be a selling point. I have some time to think about what I want to do and while that helps in the moment, it makes defeat that more frustrating. The fact that it’s sprite art gets the classic gamer in me stoked out of my mind. The level and character design is unique and interesting.
Replay value is potentially high as well, with outcomes that vary and a long list of achievements to obtain that will require multiple play-throughs. Of course, after completing the game you may also never want to play it again. That much depends on how dedicated a gamer you are.
The part that makes it so addicting is that, once you’ve failed, the reason for your failure becomes obvious. It’s increasingly easy to get through the puzzles the more you fail at them–but it totally works. I might get all the way to the end of a level then fail. Because I know immediately what went wrong (or at least think I do), I jump back into the level by clicking the “Retry” button with determination and conviction in my new strategy.
Gods Will Be Watching arose from the Ludum Dare 26 Game Jam and was later expanded on thanks to the success of an IndieGoGo campaign and the hard work of the team at Deconstructeam.
We Had to Kill Him to Survive
Gods Will Be Watching is a survival-thriller. There’s espionage and terrorism and torture. It’s no wonder then that you have to occasionally choose between options that can only be labeled as “bad” and “worse.”
The game tells the story of a group of characters stranded on a frozen alien planet beset by a paralytic space virus. Sure, there’s some flashbacks to color the story itself, but mostly your goal here is to keep as many of your comrades alive as possible. To do so, you’re faced with some hard decisions and some really bleak options.
The real challenge in Gods Will Be Watching is resource management. To complete a level you’ll need to achieve an objective that requires you to meet several other objectives (Like cracking a code, creating a antidote, or keeping certain characters alive). For example, your first foray into gameplay has you managing a hostage situation from the inside while you simultaneously attempt to hack a network and retrieve data. There are hostages inside that could try to flee ,or fight, depending on their status which relies entirely on actions you take. There’s also a SWAT team ready to flashbang your whole team and capture you. Oh, and don’t let the network security meter decrease too much or your download will take even longer.
Every mission is just as complex, if not more so. Often you are required to solve mini-puzzles as one of the several tasks you must undertake to complete a level. It’s no wonder then that, through all of this, there’s a lot of failed attempts.
Why It’s Fun to Play
Gods Will Be Watching has a fun and interesting story. The dialog is solid, which feels surprising coming from a smaller game such as this. It isn’t often that you see such engaging dialog (even if it is rife with grammar and syntax errors). You get attached to the characters, too–which can cause problems in gameplay. Often the most logical decision to make in order to survive the level might involve harming or killing a character with whom you’ve begun to connect. It’s not too unlike the decision making process in games like the Fallout series.
The teaser trailer below will show you everything you need to know about the game. It features some graphic 8-bit violence though, so it’s not for the kids.
The Reason This Isn’t a 10-Star Game
It’s hard and incredibly frustrating. I’m keen on marathon gaming–sitting down and playing for long periods of time to get as many achievements as possible. You can’t easily do that with Gods Will Be Watching. Each level takes about 30-45 minutes to play. If you fail, you start the level over at the beginning. After two or three fails, you’ll probably figure out how to get through the puzzle–but are you willing to play for 2-3 hours just to progress through a single level?
Gods Will Be Watching is available on Steam for Windows, Mac, and Linux for $9.99.
