Monday, June 20, 2016

Reus - Initial Thoughts

About the Game (From the Steam Store Page)

In Reus, you control powerful giants that help you shape the planet to your will. You can create mountains and oceans, forests and more. Enrich your planet with plants, minerals and animal life. There is only one thing on the planet that you do not control: mankind, with all their virtues and and all their vices. You can shape their world, but not their will. Provide for them and they may thrive. Give them too much, and their greed may gain the upper hand.

Previous Playtime

2 hours

What Was I Thinking When I Bought This

I can't really say for sure, aside from the usual "it's super-cheap, so obviously I have to get it" BS. It was a couple of months after I started the blog, so I'm sure hubris at the thought of the inevitability of me finishing all my games was a factor as well.  Although those quotidian explanations only tell half the story.

Though my memory is foggy, I do recall that there was something about Reus' presentation and pitch that really got to me. God games appeal to me generally, and strategy games more generally still, but seeing those adorable giants on that colorful curved 2D world sparked something in me.

Expectations and Prior Experience

A couple of months ago, I was feeling a little drained by my "one game at a time marathon-style" routine and I got a little curious about some of the games that were lower on my priority list. Almost at random, I decided to give Reus a try. I found it a charming little casual strategy game with appealing characters and art design and a pattern-of-play that was soothing in its regularity.

My big hope going forward is that this is a game I can fit into my spare moments, something I can play in the odd half-hour or so between packing boxes and calling my creditors. Reus is notable among strategy games in that it has a built-in time limit per match, which means that you can't really play it any way but casually.

My big fear is that the simple, relaxing gameplay I experienced in my previous two hours is the limit of Reus' complexity, and that attempting to play it for 20 hours will just lead me to repeating the same easily-conquered mini-game over and over again. However, this fear is pretty faint. Reus has 123 achievements, which means that even if the bulk of the game is mindless grinding, I won't be too put out because at least I'll have something to grind for (he said, shortly after getting frustrated with Long Live the Queen's achievement grinding).

No comments:

Post a Comment