The Gods Will Be Watching — Critical Review

You Survived X Number Of Days

The Gods Will Be Watching is a survival game.

Found on your local web-browser, over at this Deconstructeam.

It also has versions you can play in Spanish, French, Russian, and Italian.

This game provides the a lot of immersive aspects to the survival genre. You are the Sargent who is in control of a group of people stranded on a planet.
You need to get out by the 40th day or 40th turn.

Each person with you has a certain ability. Making medicine, repairing the radio, and so on. Aside from the 4 other humans with you, there is a android and a dog.

The android can repair similar to the doctor and the engineer. The dog can hunt similar to the soldier but without an ammo cost and less of a likenesses to be successful.

That might but a bit much to take in all at once but that part of the fun. Learning how each part of the team contributes to the overall progress of the game takes time.

There are several characters. There is you the Sergeant, the android BR4Nd-ON, the Engineer, the Doctor, the Psychiatrist, the Soldier, and the faithful dog Marvin.

There are 3 basic mechanics:

1. Talk
2. The characters special ability
3. Kill

The Doctor is the only character who has 4 options. Meaning he can make medicine as his ability but also can do some work on the radio like the Engineer (just not as well).

You have 5 action points at the beginning. You have an action point for every other human still on your team. This seems like enough at the beginning but people start to lose sanity over time. Eventually some of these team mates run away because they become mad.

A lot of the circumstances that randomly occur through out the game can drastically change the pace. A few play-throughs have given me instances where I had all 5 team mates healthy and sane, but then, suddenly animals came over night and took our food wasted our bullets and everyone got scared. Suffice it to say not many people stayed by my side for the next day. But Marvin is always by your side.

The android BR4ND-ON can provide you with an action that doesn't actually cost an action point. He can
provide information about what's going on. It's a useful tool for understanding how sane each person is on a numerical scale. The closer each person is to zero the more likely they are to go mad an run away. Also he tells you the progress of the radio repair.

What's the radio for? Well the radio needs to be repaired by the 40th day or you loose. It's the only way to contact the rescue party that you need to be saved. The Engineer is the best at fixing the radio.

The game causes you to worry about the radio while also making you try and survive 40 days with this unstable group of survivors.

You require to keep your food rations up, the sanity of each character up, your ammunition supplies full, and your medicine needs to always have to have some vaccines. The food is need to keep your from starving. Animals come to steal things randomly between turns and ammo is needed to fight them off but it can also be used to give you the best chance of getting food using the soldier (90% success rate as opposed to Marvin who has 60% for no bullets).

This place has a virus you need to be wary of. It's a virus which freezes a character. I won't spoil the name of the virus but the fact that it stops your character from moving is a hint.

Prepare to die a lot.

The game is extremely difficult. Always giving you random challenges. After a few rounds of nothing happening, I caught myself getting comfortable and taking less risks w getting food and just focused on the radio to get saved. Then. All of a sudden. A round finished and in the transition while the screen was black some white texted appeared. Letting me know that all my food is gone. I then see all my parties members. Almost all of them look like they're about to lose their mind.

The game can be stressful but that "on edge" excitement kept me wanting to go back and try it again. It's simple and it usually doesn't take long (because death is quite frequent).





The art style sort of reminds me of Swords and Sworcery.

With straight forward mechanics and a clear goal the player is tasked with surviving for forty days. The games difficulty keeps you dying and coming back to try again. Knowing how to play but not exactly how to win.

Oh and by the way; never leave the fireplace unlit!

Have fun!