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Godus is a God Game by 22 Cans funded by Kickstarter. The game is designed by Peter Molyneux to be the Spiritual Successor to Populous. You are the governing deity (benevolent or otherwise) of a primitive tribe of people. With your assistance they will build a civilization, unlocking new technology for them and greater powers for yourself along the way. It was first released as a fully paid-for game on PC in 2013, and then as Freemium iOS and Android game in 2014.

In 2016 a Stand-alone expansion of the game was released called Godus Wars; it was a free update for those that already owned the original game. Featuring a faster style of gameplay, the player would pick one of four gods at set out to conqueror the world via a series of quick battles.

On December 14, 2023, 22cans announced that both games (Godus and Wars) will no longer be purchasable on Steam.


The game features examples of the following tropes:

  • Anti-Hoarding: Godus Wars has a hard 1000 belief cap on extra battle making it prudent to spend that on altering the terrain or creating citadels.
  • Call-Back: As with Black & White, Godus begins with the player rescuing some drowning followers.
  • Clap Your Hands If You Believe: Belief, generated by your people, is your power source.
  • Colour Coded Armies: Godus Wars sees you fighting agaisnt different coloured gods, netural tribes are present and appear as grey.
  • The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: In an attempt to make things more challenging in Godus Wars, the AI will get several promoted units of archers to help defend their base if you get too close, and have wiped out their abilities to create more units.
  • Death from Above: The Meteor power, which allows you to wipe out enemies in a small area and lower the land by a couple of layers.
  • Double Unlock: First you have to unlock "cards" to gain access to new technology/powers; then you have to use stickers on the cards to actually gain the ability.
  • Fake Difficulty: Of the 'bad technical aspects' variety. The bizarre behavior of the terrain sculpting tool makes it extremely hard to shape the terrain with any degree of precision, especially on a mobile device. It may lower the entire layer when you were trying to fill in a tiny hole, it may raise the ocean near a mountain instead of lowering the mountain, or it may simply do nothing at all. Since this is the game's main selling point and it costs Belief to use in most cases this borders on Game-Breaking Bug.
  • Fake Longevity: As with most Freemium build games, everything takes a long time to complete, building a single large house for example can take over twenty minutes. You can of course speed up the process, but for a price. Once you unlock farming, suddenly all buildings require grain (where before they were free). Grain takes two hours to grow and requires special buildings you can only get by spending a lot of belief. This, oddly enough, carries over onto the PC, where you can spend "gems" to speed things up. The developers have stated they may reduce the length of time waiting in the main-game for the PC version, or open it up so the player themselves can change the time and value on items.
  • Freemium: The mobile versions of the game. You can play through the whole game for free but it'll take forever.
  • A God Is You: You play as a god helping civilization prosper by shaping the land with the power of your people's belief in you.
  • G-Rated Sex: Breeders; Two people walk into a house, and three people come out.
  • Human Sacrifice: In the PC version, you can send people to the Pit of Doom to gain gems, which can be used to speed up construction and other things.
  • Meteor-Summoning Attack: The meteor power calls down a meteorite onto a target, wiping out anything in a small area and creating a visible crater in the process.
  • Microtransactions:
    • Repeatedly pointed out by the devs that the PC version will not have these, the mobile versions however, well...
    • By the time Godus Wars came about you were required to buy any new islands that you unlocked. After massive fan outcry, 22 Cans reversed this decision.
  • Perpetual Beta: Despite having been out since 2013, it's still clearly unfinished, with half-implemented features and perpetually-paused events being readily obvious, and with the developer having abandoned it in favor of other projects it seems unlikely to ever be. The last update for the PC version was in 2016, with no further developer comments.
  • Porn Stache: The giants sport nice old-fashioned strongmen taches.
  • Our Giants Are Bigger: In the voyages, Giants are a common enemy to avoid.
  • Real Men Wear Pink: Male Breeders wear pink smocks, whereas the females wear beige.
  • Terrain Sculpting: Rather the point of the game, create large flat areas for your people to build on. The game's world is layered however; the higher the land the more bonuses you get for building on it, but the more expensive in belief it is for you alter it.
  • There Can Only Be One: In the mobile version, the player cannot occupy the same land as the Astari god or even communicate directly with them, only read their diary and observe their territory as marked by the grey area.
  • Unreliable Narrator: The tablets the player finds in the mobile version seem to be some sort of diary written by their character, giving some more detail to events they experience and explaining the story as the god they play experiences it. It turns out to be the diary of the Astari god, who the player unknowingly pushed out of the land in order to make room for their own domain.
  • Veteran Unit: In Godus Wars, units that surive long enough gain levels making them stronger and changing their appearance.
  • Verbal Tic: Followers speak in single words ending with the syllable "um". Expect to hear many iterations of the words "buildum" and "completum".

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