This is a unique game, presented as a traditional point-'n'-click adventure title but more focused on strategy and planning instead of puzzle solving. If you push on and don't give up, you'll be rewarded -- just expect a few heartbreaking moments first.
It is certainly not a complete success however. Even on the easier difficulty setting players will still be sitting through repeated animations, and the loss of huge swathes of time after each failure can drive one mad. Meanwhile the reliance on chance, while admittedly in fitting with the reality of such situations, feels cumbersome and can really ramp up frustration. In the end it all depends on how much suffering you are willing to devote to a game.
In my opinion this game is amazing, exactly what I've been craving in games that has been lost since the good old days. Games now hold your hand and walk you through so if you want challenge you have to wait 2 hours to see if it's even there and it's usually not. This game is hard. A lot of people failed the first level and wrote bad reviews. This is fine. I appreciate their reviews. They were frustrated and disappointed. But there is a place for games like this for those of us who want an appropriate challenge. The main thing is that you slowly get better and better and figure out how to achieve your goal more and more. But if you're not clever or just have bad luck and can't figure out how some of the dynamics work, you're just not going to pass even the first level. The game is only what? 10 dollars? So if you're looking for a challenge, try it out and if you are disappointed you're out 10 bucks. These kinds of challenges are rare, and personally I hate a game that is not challenging. If there is no challenge there is no need to think, nothing interesting. Without challenge I feel like I am watching a bad movie. This game makes me think a lot and I absolutely love it. More like this please!
It's not just about challenge of course. I love the pixelated graphics, the complex but interesting sci-fi story, and I love the difficult decisions. Should I kill this innocent person to advance my goals? It puts you in that situation a lot. If you look at the reviews here it's a mix of love and hate. So give it a try, challenge yourself, take a chance and see what you think. Worst case you're out 10 bucks and 30 minutes.
This game is a 10 for me, but could easily be lower for others. It is a game for a specific type of player, it is punishing, repetitive and at times you will just have to quit out of it to not yell at the screen. But if you are the kind of person who enjoys brute forcing down a problem by learning a little more each time this game is for you. The moral questions it asks of its players are well thought out, cleverly drawing the player into immoral actions by playing off your frustration with your lack of success, only to gut check you when you win that way. Sure you 'won' this time by killing a bunch of hostages, but you could have won without doing that.. you monster.
The art style is wonderful, the levels are clever, the story is entertaining and the ending is satisfying. If you can suffer the hundreds of failed attempts in the way they are meant to be endured you will love this game.
Gods Will Be Watching is the sort of love it or hate it video game affair that only transformative titles that push the boundaries of their genre can present. It’s not trying to make you kick puppies, it’s not trying to make you hold hands and sing Kumbaya, it’s about finding a mixture of the two that leads to your survival and doesn’t give you too many nightmares afterward.
Gods Will Be Watching could’ve been one of the best indie games of 2014. A challenging adventure about making deadly choices. A game we would’ve loved to mention in a single breath together with The Banner Saga, Papers Please and The Walking Dead. Unfortunately, the developers focused too much on a risk management game mechanic, which is more irritating than emotionally moving.
The premise is solid, but the game relies too much on chance and trial and error, so it's hard to recommend this title to anyone but masochists and those who are hell-bent on experiencing the story — no matter what.
In 2013, Deconstructeam entered a Ludum Dare competition with a bare bones concept of a game. Now, a year later, this game has a price tag, but it’s bare just as it was back then.
I played the demo many years ago. It was just a short suvival webgame, where you had to manage a small group of survivers on a fire. When I first saw this game, my first thought was "hey, I already played that for free many month ago!"
But then I bought this game when it was on sale. This game is much more then the demo. It has 6 different chapters, each unique. You always have to make decissions and manage your resources to survive or reach a certain goal in a set time. It is not real time, but turn based. So for example, you got like 25 days to reach a goal. You need to care for your crewmembers health and morale and you need to handle random events.
And its all in this cool old adventure look :)
I really love this game. It can be really challanging sometimes and it is hard to keep everyone alive. You often have to leave someone behind. I just reached chapter 5 by now.
Each chapter is very different, so its not just the same mechanism just with 6 different backgrounds. Each chapter has unique mechanisms, dangers and ways to play it. In one chapter, you are just around a fire and need to keep everyone alive and the fire runing, and you need to care about their health. In another chapter, you are in a desert with a big team and need to care for water and ammunition, while moving around the desert.
I'm very curious how all this ends. I could go on playing 100 chapters of this! :)
I played the demo a few years ago and immediately bought the game after its release. I have to say i still like the look and feel of the game, but the gameplay itself and the difficulty aren't all that great. Its good for what it is, but if it hadn't been for the story, i would not have finished the game.
Also, i encountered a few bugs during my playthrough. For example one time my partner died during an interogation scene but the main character was still talking to him, even though he wasn't in the scene anymore. Instead, there was a robot-like thing standing at the corner of the screen, which then immediately glitched away once the dialogue was over. I am not rating the game down because of this bug, as it felt pretty cool at the time and actually added to the strange mood.
I am just mentioning it so you know what to expect ;)
If you want to play an interactive science fiction story, give this game a try. If not, stay away from it.
Not bad. I think Gods will be Watching is as better as the score says... I think it's a simplistic-but-complex game at the same time. Maybe I prefer other games, but GWBW is also a great purchase to try with a different kind of games
This is tough because I didn't actually get to play the game. The art style brought me back to some classics, and the raving reviews kept me interested. I was pretty excited when I was able to launch the game, only to be sorta let down, but not exactly at the game's fault.
Instead I wondered around a small room trying to figure out what the hell to click to make some bars move up and down. I felt like a moron after trial and error, after trial and error, lead to the same flashbang grenade game over screen.
Maybe I am an idiot, but I just can't understand what the **** this game wants me to do.
I want to slit my wrists in frustration.
Needless to say, if have the patience to play out the same FIRST LEVEL over and over again to succeed and progress to what I imagine to be something that is made of pure magic (based on critic scores) this is the game for you. Meanwhile, I'm going to give it about 50 more stupid tries in hopes of figuring out why there are a group of people sitting around a campfire.
Maybe they're friends.
I can accept and embrace the fact that this game is a very hard one. What I cannot do is approve of the barebones concept that is this game. The "Riskmanagemant" in this case is simply an euphemism for unnecessarily unforgiving trial and error featuring a lot of RNG. Which kind of boils down that this game has - despite it's nice gaphic style, great music and (probably) good story - doesn't really have any actual gameplay. I cannot really judge the story/dialogue since I've not seen that much of it.
I never had the feeling of actually enjoying myself, just pushing on because I wanted to advance the story. I might be playing the game the wrong way or just being spoiled by the new steamlined generation of games, but artificially stretching the interesting concept of GWBW into full game lengh seems like a horrible design choice for me.
SummaryGods Will Be Watching is a minimalistic point and click thriller centered on despair, commitment, and sacrifice as players face narrative puzzles and moral dilemmas that will affect both the lives of your team and the people you are sworn to protect. Set against the backdrop of an interstellar struggle, Gods Will Be Watching follows Sgt....