Playing god

Reus 2 is a different kind of god game

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Hello Scientist Gamer!

My memories of god games, where I get to shape everything about a planet or society, starts with Black and White and Spore. In those games, you were responsible for shaping your small tribe and their place in the world, occasionally fighting other gods who are looking to disrupt your tribe (Black and White). Or evolving a single cell organism, fighting for your place in a primordial soup, to a space-faring civilization fighting back enemies as you make your way to the center of the universe.

But in both those cases, the environment plays a passive role in how they affect the evolution of the civilization or organism. They are obstacles to navigate or resources to exploit.

So it was refreshing to find myself in a game, Reus 2, where that formula was flipped on its head. As a Zeus-like entity, you’ll direct a collection of mini-gods who will shape the environment for your budding tribe.

🔗 Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1875060/Reus_2/
📅 Release date: May 28, 2024
🖥️ Developer: Abbey Games
📢 Publisher: Firesquid
🎮 Available on: Steam (PC)

What is Reus 2?

Reus 2 is best described as a cozy, civilization building game. There are no direct conflicts or timers to worry about, which means you can spend as much time as you want thinking about your world.

You’ll be doing three main things. The first is planning the landscape (biome) of your planet. Animals, plants, and minerals can only be placed in certain environments and space is limited, so how much of each biome you include will affect what you can place. There may be bonuses that can only be accessed if the biome is of a certain size or other similar limitations, so there is a lot to think about even when deciding how to shape the land.

The second thing you’ll be doing is placing animals, plants, and minerals (bioticum) in the right biome. Each bioticum will give you points for food, wealth, science, or mystery, which are used by your people to level up their settlements. You only start off with a handful of choices, but even then, the bonuses you get for having a predator and prey next to each other or making sure that there is only one particular bioticum in a given biome will have you thinking about optimal placements.

These biotica affect a global biodiversity score, meaning you can’t spam the highest scoring bioticum for your tribes — the game rewards you for thinking about how all of the bioticum are related to each other, sometimes trading off bonuses for others.

The final thing is choosing various rewards and bonuses for your settlements and the surrounding biotica. You have a set number of biotica you can put down before the game advances to the next era, and when the era turns over, you can choose bonuses that become available to you. Many of the bonuses are unlocked by developing your settlements in a certain way, encouraging you to play differently.

Each settlement you create will have its own requests and fulfilling those requests usually gives you access to more bioticum. So, you’ll be choosing the next set of biotica to add to your world. You won’t have an infinite number of choices, so you’ll want to be very choosy about the bioticum to develop your planet.

Barriers to playing the game

There aren’t any physical limitations when it comes to playing the game as the control scheme is very simple. Click and drag are the two movements you’ll be using the most.

It is, however, a lot of reading and thinking. Reading and understanding how the biotica are connected to each other and how the bonuses feed off of the bioticum can be challenging, depending on the wording.

Some bonuses, like those that activate when you place two connected biotica next to each other, are very easy to understand. Others give you bonuses for being the only biotica in a biome or multiply the effects of the highest producing biotica in a biome. It’s those that I’ve had a harder time figuring out what the actual bonuses work out to be; it might have been helpful to see a preview of what the final numbers look like before you place it just to make planning a little easier.

How long you can expect to play the game

Your mileage may vary, but for the first little while, a 90-minute session will get you from the beginning of the game through the first two eras. The third era is unlocked once you’ve played for a bit (I just unlocked it after playing for about 10 h and accumulating points on my profile), so you won’t need to worry about that right away.

There are many different eras to unlock, depending on how you develop your settlements. Since you can’t play them all in a single sitting, if you want to experience them all, you’ll have to start new planets. Thankfully, it isn’t hard to get into this game, which is central to the game’s replayability.

You’ll gain profile points as you complete your games, which gives you access to new mini-gods or biomes to explore. Of course, these unlocks add more things for you to try out.

I’ve had great fun recreating fantasy worlds like Hoth, Mon Cala, and Tatooine (yes, they are all from the Star Wars universe) as challenge runs in Reus 2. My only wish, and one that I’ve suggested as a feature, is to have the option of including fantastical creatures as part of the biome. Who wouldn’t want to see Taun Tauns or sandworms on their planets? Or dinosaurs? Dragons? There are endless content possibilities I see that can add to the replayability of this game.

Final thoughts

I tend to stay away from civilization builders because they all feel the same: lay down a bunch of farms and houses to get the economy going and build up from there. But Reus 2 feels different, maybe because I’m breathing life into a planet, making it teem with life. There’s a certain satisfaction in watching the empty lands become full of interconnected animals, plants, and minerals. You can see some of this play out if you zoom in, as villagers will throw spears to hunt animals, who in turn hunt each other if they are in a predator-prey relationship.

If you’re looking for a short and cozy session of world building, I would highly recommend Reus 2.

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