I so badly wanted this game to be good. I loved Populous, and I've been vaguely following this for a while. On seeing it available for a mere £3.50 elsewhere, I thought, "This is gonna be a steal."

How wrong I was. And let me make this clear, a full asking price of £15 is an absolute, utter, complete rip-off.

What you are buying is a mobile game. This is not a PC game. Yes, they've TRIED to adapt it to the PC... The gems, which you would clearly pay money for on your mobile device, have alternative ways of being attained, through sacrificing followers, or doing voyages (puzzle missions). But you still have to sit around for hours on end for them to build things, checking frequently to collect items by tapping... Uh, CLICKING on them, forming the core function for why anything gets done.

I guess the premise of the game is cool, and definitely brought me to playing it. You drag land to make it suitable to be built on. Your people can only navigate certain terrain and rely on you to make a clear path.

But it reeks of mobile game syndrome. Almost every single action costs "belief" (energy), which recharges over real life time. This is only made worse by the fact that although you have an uncapped amount of belief, you still have to collect it from each individual household your people build, which DO have maximum caps, varying on the type of house. That means your early game houses, making maybe 70 belief per hour, max out at 40. You can see the problem here, if you want to make progress whilst doing other things.

And otherwise, I don't yet see any real reason to play. All you do is sculpt land to expand and repeat. There doesn't seem to be any real goal. The voyages (missions) are straightforward and irritating, especially when the final idiot villager you needed to reach the checkpoint decides to go back to the start because you were half a second too slow molding the land, meaning you have to wait (a significant amount of time in real life) for those villagers to respawn so you can complete the mission.

I will probably keep playing, for a little while. But honestly, even paying £3.50, this was a rip-off. You might as well just go play Tiny Tower. Or, if you want a really fun PC adapted mobile game, try New Star Soccer! This game has so much work to be done if it's to become a PC game.

EDIT: I've played this more to give it a better shot, and my only additional comment is, the path finding is so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ awful, it makes the voyages (missions) impossible sometimes.

I so badly wanted this game to be good. I loved Populous, and I've been vaguely following this for a while. On seeing it available for a mere £3.50 elsewhere, I thought, "This is gonna be a steal." How wrong I was. And let me make this clear, a full asking price of £15 is an absolute, utter, complete rip-off. What you are buying is a mobile game. This is not a PC game. Yes, they've TRIED to adapt it to the PC... The gems, which you would clearly pay money for on your mobile device, have alternative ways of being attained, through sacrificing followers, or doing voyages (puzzle missions). But you still have to sit around for hours on end for them to build things, checking frequently to collect items by tapping... Uh, CLICKING on them, forming the core function for why anything gets done. I guess the premise of the game is cool, and definitely brought me to playing it. You drag land to make it suitable to be built on. Your people can only navigate certain terrain and rely on you to make a clear path. But it reeks of mobile game syndrome. Almost every single action costs "belief" (energy), which recharges over real life time. This is only made worse by the fact that although you have an uncapped amount of belief, you still have to collect it from each individual household your people build, which DO have maximum caps, varying on the type of house. That means your early game houses, making maybe 70 belief per hour, max out at 40. You can see the problem here, if you want to make progress whilst doing other things. And otherwise, I don't yet see any real reason to play. All you do is sculpt land to expand and repeat. There doesn't seem to be any real goal. The voyages (missions) are straightforward and irritating, especially when the final idiot villager you needed to reach the checkpoint decides to go back to the start because you were half a second too slow molding the land, meaning you have to wait (a significant amount of time in real life) for those villagers to respawn so you can complete the mission. I will probably keep playing, for a little while. But honestly, even paying £3.50, this was a rip-off. You might as well just go play Tiny Tower. Or, if you want a really fun PC adapted mobile game, try New Star Soccer! This game has so much work to be done if it's to become a PC game. EDIT: I've played this more to give it a better shot, and my only additional comment is, the path finding is so fucking awful, it makes the voyages (missions) impossible sometimes.