Abbey Games is a studio you may have heard of. They were a bit of a breakout star with their first game, Reus, which was a game that surprised many with its kinda-like-Black-and-White gameplay. You know, that Black and White.

Then they continued their development journey and made a very unique FTL-like game, Renowned Explorers, only instead of spaceships, you were a group of Indiana-Jones-like explorers and combat didn’t always mean hitting your opponents. It’s a fantastic game if you haven’t already played it.

Then earlier this year, they started a Kickstarter for a god game, Godhood. It successfully reached its goal mainly because of the positive reception that their previous games received. They’d built a lot of goodwill based on their reputation of being responsive and talented.

Godhood is a game about developing a religion and then encouraging people to follow it. How you develop it and how you encourage people to follow it is where the player is meant to come in.

However, things took a bit of a turn downhill when Godhood finally released to the bigger group through Steam Early Access. The game’s rating currently sits at ‘Mixed’ on Steam and there have been many o’ people providing criticism. Most of it is constructive, but some, not so much.

That hasn’t stopped Abbey Games from acting on the feedback, however, and soon, the ‘Milestone 1’ update will hit and based on my time with it, you can really tell they know how to make Godhood the god game we’ve all be clamoring for.

I recently got the chance to sit down with Manuel, one of the lead gameplay programmers at Abbey Games and a co-founder of the studio, and ask him about the journey of Godhood so far. You can listen here:

You can currently opt-in to the work-in-progress beta for ‘Milestone 1’ and so I did. I came away very pleasantly surprised at how much better the game feels already. As someone who invested $80 to see this game come to fruition, I’ve sometimes felt like my money wasn’t well placed. However, my faith has been renewed with the look and feel of ‘Milestone 1’ and I can confidently say that I’m excited for the future of Godhood. You can watch me take a look at the build here:

Needless to say, I’m emotionally invested in Godhood. I personally really want to see it succeed and it appears that Abbey Games is on the right track. I’ll be sure to update you all when the next major update drops and we start to get a good feel for how Godhood will shape up.

Did any of you help Kickstart Godhood? Are any of you engaged in the Early Access period? I’d love to know.

Thanks for tuning in this week. Hopefully, Godhood appeals to some of you and maybe we can watch it grow together.

Until next time, keep eXploring!