WorldBox - God Simulator is a sandbox video game developed by Maxim Karpenko. The game started as a prototype in 2012, before being released in early access on Windows, Mac, iOS and Android in 2018, and since receiving a Steam release in 2021.
While most other God Games impose some kind of limits or objectives on the player for the sake of game balance, WorldBox intends to set itself apart by giving the player a truly godlike position with unlimited power to shape the world, nurture it, and lay it to waste at a whim. The world is your canvas, so make some art.
This game contains examples of:
- Alien Invasion: One of the "Other Disasters" that can happen from time to time.
- Aliens Are Bastards: UFOs fly around and shoot a giant Death Ray at random things below them and, if they're shot down, the aliens that pop out shoot anything that lives on sight.
- Always Chaotic Evil: Demons, Evil Mages and Necromancers all start with the Evil trait and kill anything that moves and isn't one of their own on sight.
- Anachronism Stew: The core civilization mechanics revolve around tribal to medieval time periods, but you can also have bandits running around throwing TNT at people or drop nuclear bombs yourself.
- Anthropomorphic Personification: Greg is the fears of the world's inhabitants given physical form, represented aptly as a giant head in a permanent expression of horror.
- Antimatter: One of the Destruction Powers is an Antimatter Bomb, which obliterates everything caught in the blast radius.
- Apocalypse How: Up to Class 6. One of the main draws of the game is the many ways you can bring about The End of the World as We Know It, including but not limited to Alien Invasion, Zombie Apocalypse, raining nukes, Grey Goo, demon invasion, Crabzilla attack, and so on.
- Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Village leaders and kings are usually the first to equip themselves with the best gear that their kingdom creates, thus making them able to defend themselves when it comes down to it.
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Crabzilla, a player-controlled Giant Enemy Crab and Godzilla Shout-Out.
- Attack Reflector: The Thorns trait, spliced from the Super Pumpkin mobs, has this effect.
- Blob Monster: The Biomass and acid slimes.
- Bolt of Divine Retribution: You have the ability to strike spots with lightning, though it isn't too effective and usually bounces people around rather than smiting them.note It does start fires and heat up the area enough that repeated strikes in the same place will start splashing magma.
- Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: It's technically possible for Crabzilla to be killed without the player choosing to self-destruct, but it still results in a nuclear explosion that lays waste to everything and everyone caught in the blast. Not to mention, they're Fighting a Shadow.
- Character Level: Creatures have a traditional RPG-style leveling system where they gain Experience Points to level up and increase their stats, capping at level 10.
- Chekhov's Volcano: Volcanos are always erupting, as soon as they're placed and until they're destroyed.
- A Child Shall Lead Them: It's possible for a child to become the ruler of a kingdom if you kill all the other candidates.
- Constructed World: The game centers around creating these, though some people have recreated the Earth and certain continents or countries.
- A Commander Is You: Disregarding the fact you don't command any of the civilizations more than starting and ending the wars, the four races have their perks.
- Humans: Generalist, they also advance faster than others.
- Orcs: Brute and Spammer, although their culture doesn't advance as fast, they breed a lot more, have Regenerating Health and are the strongest in combat.
- Elves: Ranger, their randomized kingdom names and their icon shows that they'll be one of the first to develop bows and utilize them the most. Their long lifespan also means they could have more veterans in their ranks.
- Dwarves: Elitist, they don't breed as much as the other three but their ability to mine rare minerals and gems means that they'll get better equipment, leading to more elite regiments if they can get going.
- Crapsack World: Even if the player is neutral, the world is naturally one: kingdoms with power seek to expand it through constant warfare; demons and dark mages invade the world; meteors can fall on a village randomly; and the ages of the world, while some can be as good as the Age of Hope, most ages involve florest burning, lands freezing, plagues spreading and more creatures invading the world, with the game recognizing that life is difficult in this world. And not to mention how the player can make things worse.
- Cruel Player-Character God: The game gives you plenty of tools to torture your little mortals.
- Crystal Dragon Jesus: Well-developed kingdoms can make statues of both your Themed Cursor and Crabzilla, implying they worship you. A future update adding a religion mechanic will likely fully employ this trope.
- Fighting Your God: If you summon Crabzilla and go near a city, the soldiers there will immediately swarm you and try to tickle you to death. If you get careless it can happen, much to the perpetrators' cost.
- Crystal Landscape: The Crystal Biome.
- Curse: Makes the victim weak and miserable and causes them to become an animated skeleton when they die.
- Dangerously Garish Environment: The Candy Biome, "the most evil one" out of a selection including a Physical Hell. The native gingerbread men and gummy bears are Always Chaotic Evil and love eating flesh.
- Divine Delegation: Can be invoked with the God Fingers, described as a "multiplayer simulator". They're basically a sentient replica of your ability to shape the land, that move around randomly while drawing land at will; not quite management, not much worse than what you probably do with the world. They're largely untouchable, don't have stats or names, and can only be killed by one of your powers.
- Don't Try This at Home: The achievement name for lighting up TNT.
- Elemental Powers:
- Green Thumb: The Druid can entangle people with vines and make flowers bloom as they walk.
- An Ice Person: The White Mage uses ice-themed magic, and Cold Ones and Snowmen freeze the ground as they walk.
- Playing with Fire: The Evil Mage uses fire-themed magic, and Demons have Flaming Swords and set the ground ablaze as they walk.
- Emissary from the Divine: You can use the Divine Light power (which also summons angels from the sky) on a ruler to cancel a plan they have yet to execute, implying they're being ordered to quit it.
- Eye Scream: Creatures have a chance to acquire the "One eyed" trait through combat, implying this outcome.
- Eye Patch Of Power: Downplayed with the "One eyed" trait, they get a tiny bonus to Diplomacy but carries plenty of other stat penalties.
- Fantasy Metals: Mythril and Adamantite, both of which are stronger than steel and the latter apparently comes from meteorites.
- Festering Fungus: You can infect people with MUSH Spores that eventually turn them into Mushroom Men.
- Final Solution: While kingdoms of the same species will typically only try to conquer each other in war, they're hardly as nice to other species.
- Flaming Meteor: Meteors leave a trail of fire behind them as they fall to the ground.
- Fungus Humongous: The Mushroom Biome has giant mushrooms instead of trees.
- Garden Garment: Even with the low resolution sprites, early stage Elves are clearly wearing nothing more than a fig leaf over their groin and a bra in the case of female characters.
- God Is Neutral: Invoked for the many players who like to watch the world and its civilizations develop on their own, with no particular goal but seeing what happens.
- A God Is You: Capital-G God.
- Got the Whole World in My Hand: The animation for uploading a map to the Steam Workshop has Grandpa God spinning a planet around on his fingertip before slam dunking it into a cosmic basketball hoop.
- Grey Goo: Appears as one of the Destruction Powers, which slowly eats away at the land until it hits a dead end or there's none left.
- Handicapped Badass: With the "Crippled" and "One eyed" trait, you may find soldiers who gain it continue to fight and may even go on to rack up an impressive kill count.
- The Hand Is God: Your Themed Cursor is a disembodied hand and the God Fingers are giant floating hands that emulate your power of shaping the landscape. Full body depictions are there as well, but varying. Sometimes you're Grandpa God and on the game's poster
◊ you have an adorable cloud head. - Holy Burns Evil: The Divine Light power can be used to kill Demons in seconds, though it doesn't affect other creatures with the Evil trait.
- Humans Advance Swiftly: Human cultures appear to level up much faster than cultures of other races.
- Improbable Weapon User: The militaries of poorly-developed countries will often use sticks as weapons. The strongest might have legendary sticks.
- In-Universe Game Clock: Advances in a Year Inside, Hour Outside fashion as per most God-games. Every 50 in-game years or so, the world will enter a new "Age" that affects what can happen naturally along with a visual effect.
- Kill the God: One of the achievements involves smiting a God Finger with a Bolt of Divine Retribution to assert your dominance.
- Klatchian Coffee: The Coffee Rain power gives creatures Super-Speed.
- Level-Up Fill-Up: A creature is fully healed upon levelling up, especially helpful if they're in heated combat and about to die.
- Lightning Can Do Anything: Striking a creature with lightning has a chance to grant it Immortality.
- Magical Land: The Enchanted Biome. Fairies occasionally spawn and any creature in the biome will gain the "enchanted" status that will wear off when they leave.
- The Maker: You, the game, and/or the person you downloaded the map from.
- The Monolith: You can drop these in the world. They do nothing.
- Necromancer: One of the creatures you can spawn. It uses bone projectiles to attack and raises skeletons to fight for it.
- Neutrals, Critters, and Creeps: Aside from the four main races that can start their own civilizations, you have a large variety of these to place in your world as well and can crop up by themselves if allowed. Some are naturally more peaceful or hostile than others (although they can be made peaceful via traits or a World Law can be enabled that makes them unable to attack others).
- Number of the Beast: Demons have 666 health.
- One-Man Army: You can raise a human or other creature to be this by Level Grinding them, giving them powerful traits and having them take the best gear off their fallen enemies.
- Person of Mass Destruction: If left unchecked, Evil Mages can singlehandedly burn down cities and dent the world's population.
- Physical Hell: The Infernal Biome.
- The Plague: One of your powers is to infect people with this, and it's also spread by rats.
- Power Born of Madness: A mad entity is stronger and faster than a sane one.
- Plague Doctor: Actually does its job and cures people of The Plague, and is also immune to it.
- Rat King: One of the creatures you can spawn, a large rat that normal-sized rats follow.
- Ray Gun: Aliens are armed with these.
- Regenerating Health: A trait that creatures can acquire or be given by the player. Orcs have this trait by default.
- Royals Who Actually Do Something: Kings and Village Leaders will happily participate in the same activities as their peasants to help develop their village. They're also more than willing to throw down when it comes to defending their kingdom from danger.
- RPG Elements: Creatures can level up via killing other creatures which boosts their overall stats, acquire traits based on what they do, and sentient creatures can equip gear. A job system also exists where villagers may partake in various tasks such as building, gathering, mining, paving, guarding, or even joining a warband in their kingdom.
- Sand Worm: Thankfully it stays underground, though it can cause some damage by messing with the landscape.
- Sapient House: You can bring houses to life and grant them mobility.
- Science Fantasy: Technically depends on what you decide to put in your world, but all the tools available have a mix of High Fantasy and Science Fiction elements. You have the Standard Fantasy Races, White & Black Mage, fire-breathing dragons, animated skeletons, and also aliens with spaceships, Nanomachines, robot drones trying to assimilate the world, a Robot Santa that drops giftwrapped bombs, and absurdly powerful Antimatter Bombs.
- Shout-Out:
- Crab - "A tiny animal that loves to rave"
- Fox - "What does the fox say?"
- Coffee - "Gotta go fast"
- Crippled trait - "I used to be an adventurer like you"
- Blessed trait - "He never asked for this"
- Tiny trait - "What is this? A trait for ants?"
- Crabzilla
- "Ninja Turtle" achievement for having a turtle reach level 10.
- "Planet of Apes" achievement for having 100+ monkeys in a world.
- The Infinity Coin, which kills half of all living creatures in the world.
- The Powerup, a mushroom that makes the recipient larger and stronger.
- Conway's Game of Life makes a direct appearance where the cells eat away at the world while doing their thing. Langton's ant makes a similar appearance, in which the ants perform Transmutation as they move around.
- The achievements for getting 1-7 Steam Workshop likes reference the process of God creating the universe in Genesis.
- The Lemon Biome is deemed a pretty Acceptable biome; presumably the Earl of Lemongrab would agree.
- Standard Fantasy Races: Humans, Elves, Orcs and Dwarves, all with their typical traits. Also fairies, demons, angels, dragons, giants, and undead in the form of skeletons and zombies.
- Take Over the World: It's almost inevitable for one kingdom to do this if you have wars allowed.
- The Famine: It can happen if there is overpopulation or if the kingdom is created in a land without animals or fruits for food
- Truly Single Parent: People can give birth all by themselves, no partner required. Also Purely Aesthetic Gender.
- Tunnel King: Dwarves, natch. Although there isn't any actual underground digging in gameplay, all Dwarves have the "Miner" trait that gives them a higher chance to get gems from working in mines.
- Units Not to Scale: Trees are taller than mountains, continents seem to be a mile or two across at best, and so on.
- Variable Mix: The big 0.21.0 update added not just more sound effects but a variable soundtrack that depends on how far your camera is zoomed in, what's happening nearby or in the world in general, etc.
- Veteran Unit: Not only can creatures level up via kills but a unit can also gain the "Veteran" trait that buffs their stats after enough kills as well.
- Video Game Caring Potential: Create a Utopia where everyone is immortal and lives in prosperity, nobody is violent to eachother including animals, and nothing bad ever happens...
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: ...or create a Crapsack World plagued with constant wars, monsters and disasters where civilization is always on the brink of collapse, and burn it all to the ground when you're done.
- Weapon of Mass Destruction: The Tsar Bomba, Antimatter Bomb, and Grey Goo.
- Weird Weather: Hollywood Acid and lava rain, mountain-raising earthquakes, Curse a tornado to make it envelop a continent, literal Rain of Blood that heals you, and of course, raining nukes. 0.21.0 added more types of precipitation, mainly concerning the newly added "Ages" system which includes raining ash (severely debuffs creatures and saps their health), magic (randomly grants creatures the shield, mushroom and coffee powerups), and rage (enrages creatures and has a chance to unleash their inner demons during an Age of Chaos).
- When Trees Attack: You can grant trees mobility. They're very strong and will massacre most civilized races, except for elves which are friendly with nature.
- Wide-Open Sandbox: Exactly What It Says on the Tin. You have complete control of the world and its inhabitants and no objectives or significant limitations.
- Would Hurt a Child / Would Hit a Girl / Would Harm a Senior: Armies targeting the village of an enemy kingdom will slaughter the population to every last man, woman, and child without hesitation when it comes to interracial wars.
- Zombie Apocalypse: You can start one of these with The Virus, or by just creating some zombies amidst a crowd.
