PC (Steam)
5/10
‘Doodle God’ is a new game for Steam adapted from a mobile app by Joybits. It’s similar to some other apps you can get.
In the game you play the role of God. In the beginning you have four elements, earth, air, water, and fire. From these you have to build the rest of creation.
It’s very simple to play. Pick two elements, throw them together, and see what happens. If you’re lucky you’ll get something new to play with. For example mixing earth with water will create a swamp. You can then use the swamp to help make other stuff. Sometimes when mixing nothing happens, sometimes you get more than one prize.
The game is good looking with nice animations and sweet sound effects. Sometimes when you discover a new element you’ll see it realised on the map of Earth. You can playback your journey of discovery and creation as a video to see everything spring up on the planet and bring back memories of how you clicked a couple of buttons to make it happen.
A nice touch is that each elemental discovery is accompanied by a quote from a famous person or proverb.
However, the fun of mixing things together gradually evolves into a frustration and boredom as you grind your way through the numerous elements desperately trying to find stuff that works together.
Some of the logic of the game is a little iffy, and other times you wonder why mixing certain things doesn’t yield a result, but as with all games of this type, that’s to be expected. It doesn’t really affect the overall experience.
The worst thing about the game is that it wants your money. We don’t object to paying for a game, but after buying it, we don’t expect to be faced with microtransactions. Unfortunately, ‘Doodle God’ offers packs of hints for payment, as well as a few other game tweaks to make things smoother for the player, such as letting you know if an element can not be mixed with anything else.
As a free mobile app, the microtransactions probably made sense (although I am generally not a fan of the freemium game model), but now as a PC game which has to be bought, the shop should be swapped out for an in-game way of earning hints.
The game probably overall works better as a mobile app – something simple to do while on a bus or train. When you’re in the comfort of your own home, you’d be better off with something a bit more substantial than endless tapping on icons.
You do have other modes such as puzzle and artifact building but they amount to being basically identical to the main game.
The game is charming and good looking, but considering you can get the same kind of thing for free, there’s little to no reason to buy this.
