Godus

Godus is a god video game developed by 22cans and published by DeNA. The company launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds and met their funding goal on 20 December 2012. Godus was designed by Peter Molyneux, who described it as the spiritual successor to his earlier creation, Populous. A real-time strategy, combat game spin-off, Godus Wars, was released in 2016. While the mobile versions of Godus continue to be updated, the PC editions of both games never left Steam Early Access, and are no longer available for purchase on the Steam store.

Gameplay
The player starts out by saving a man and a woman from drowning. Once the player leads them to the Promised Land, they will settle down and build a tent. They will breed a worker, who will expand the settlement by building another tent to live in. By using this strategy, the player will explore the world and improve the population through the ages. The main feature of this game is that the player is able to redesign the land stratum at will. Different strata require different amounts of "Belief", which operates like an in-game currency, to modify. The player will be able to explore at least one other world after finding a certain ship and gathering enough resources to repair it. The player will need to build more housing dwellings, which increases the population that worships the player. As the population grows, the player will be rewarded with cards that will give access to more powers and grant new abilities and behaviours to the population, as well.

Development
Godus was the effort of game designer Peter Molyneux and his development studio 22cans. The game is the spiritual successor to Molyneux's earlier creation, Populous, and is inspired by his other titles: Dungeon Keeper and Black & White. Molyneux left his position at Microsoft in March 2012 to found 22cans. With a staff of 20 people, the studio released its first game, Curiosity – What's Inside the Cube?, on 6 November 2012, and began working on Godus.

The company launched a Kickstarter campaign to help crowdfund the costs of producing the game, and the campaign met its funding goal of GB£450,000 (US$732,510) on 20 December 2012. Although the game was only funded two days before the campaign ended, any remaining pledges would be put towards stretch goals which would add features to the game such as more single-player modes, a cooperative mode, and adding support for Linux and the Ouya platform. 22cans planned to release a prototype of the game on 13 December 2012, in an effort to attract more backers to the campaign. At the close of the campaign, GB£526,563 (US$857,139) was raised and five out of the six stretch goals were reached, failing to achieve the goal for Linux and Ouya support. As of 21 December 2012, Molyneux had not set a release date for the game. As of 13 September 2013, Godus was released on Steam Early Access as a beta version.

A freemium iOS version of the game was released 7 August 2014, and the Android version was released on 27 November 2014.

With the end of 22cans' first game, Curiosity – What's Inside the Cube?, it was revealed that in Godus a single person will reign as the virtual god over all other players, with the ability to "intrinsically decide on the rules that the game is played by." It was also revealed that this same player will receive 1% of the revenue made by the game. As of February 2015, the winner Bryan Henderson had still not received the prize. In March 2017, Molyneux claimed that Godus had not made a profit and Henderson would not receive money.

In February 2015, 22cans switched focus to another title The Trail: Frontier Challenge, and the remaining Godus development team acknowledged that they "simply can't see us delivering all the features promised on the KickStarter page." Due to Molyneux's apparent abandonment of the project, contrary to his earlier enthusiasm, many fans requested refunds. Furthermore, fans frequently cited "disgraceful treatment" and blatant lying in association with Godus, and by extension Molyneux.

In February 2016, 22cans released a new early access game titled Godus Wars, a combat-focused, real-time strategy singleplayer game based on the original Godus. Godus Wars was made available at no additional cost to existing Godus owners. Simultaneously, it was offered as an independent product available for separate purchase. The purchase of Godus Wars also included Godus, while Godus still remained available on the Steam store. 22cans also announced they would continue development on Godus by adding multiplayer to Godus Wars, though this feature never came to fruition. Upon its release, Godus Wars also included micro-transactions for more content. In response to significant negative feedback from customers, 22cans CEO Simon Phillips responded and the studio removed the micro-transactions. The contract of the lead developer of the game, Konrad Naszynski, expired 28 June 2016, and it was reported that no one remained working on the PC version.

In a December 2021 interview, Molyneux stated that, "we are announcing our first new set of features for Godus in almost two years and that should be coming out before Christmas." The features were never released and the final update to Godus, aside from the release of Godus Wars in 2016, was on 2 April 2015.

As of 14 December 2023, the game is no longer available for purchase as on Steam, but is still available on mobile devices.

Reception
Eurogamer's Tom Bramwell expressed concern that successful game designers were funding their projects using Kickstarter, stating:

"'I'm looking at Kickstarter through the prism of Molyneux and Braben and Schafer and Fargo reaching out of their mansions and rattling their golden cups in my direction. They instantly put me in the mentality of a consumer [...] weighing up a pre-order against the potential fiction of their oft-broken pre-release promises. [...] It's not wrong because they are taking advantage of people – which may or may not be the case – but because this is absolutely not what Kickstarter is about.'"

PC Gamer expressed similar concern: "one wonders if Molyneux couldn't have handled his own funding". Molyneux responded, saying, "I don't see why I, with my background, should be precluded from [Kickstarter]. I made the choice when I left Microsoft to become a small developer again and to define myself like a small developer defines itself, and that is someone who takes unbelievable risks – foolish risks like releasing Curiosity and doing Kickstarter." Molyneux also said that he invested a lot of his own money into the development studio 22cans.

Additional criticisms were made over the freemium model chosen for the iOS version. Gamers and Kickstarter supporters have reacted negatively to the broken promises by Molyneux, and demands for refunds or apologies have not been met or addressed.