Reus

Incredibly slow after town gets settled on game version 1.5.1. Wait for an update if you're planning to buy.

When Reus starts it shows a hand-drawn animation of a growing world that's shaped by the giants. Until things start going wrong and the humans become aggressive. The giants decide to sleep underground and when they come back up the world has eroded and civilization dissappeared. This is a very poetic representation of the game. You create a world that will soon be forgotten in all but your memories. You know you are dealing with a time limit. Combine that with dynamically growing cities that develop differently every time, a quite complex and intriguing world development abilities system and the challenge of developing your giants differently each time with different mixes of human ambassadors that unlock new abilities and you get a game that is very enjoyable if you're the sort that likes getting lost in a wonderfully aesthetically pleasing, if slightly simple world. Reus is charismatic and carries a slightly different game inside than what you might expect. It's not a competitive game and it's storytelling is emergent, not pre-set. If you love to explore, you will keep coming back for more.

Reus is like playing as parents to mankind: you are supposed to care for them in order to see they grow and thrive, and while can slap them (and very hard indeed. For what it matters, much harder than anything you could do in Black and White) this is not the main point around which revolves the gameplay. The gameplay is a sort of puzzle: you set resources through the 4 giants' powers trying to get the most from the interactions and synergies in a limited space. Human settlements will periodically attempt "projects" which, if successfull, will lead one of them to join the giants, unlocking further powers or making more effective those already obtained. An interesting feature is the greed mechanic: if give too much to a town, its inhabitants will become more and more selfish and violent and start to wage war to other towns or even to attack the giants themselves. The beauty of the game however is that you are not forced to avoid this (and indeed there are achievements and projects even for warmongers): if want hell on earth may leave the killing/burning/maiming to the greedy little bastards; but if want a perfect eden can just wipe the pests away, or slap a little common sense in their dumb heads, or fill their surrounding with any kind of wild and dangerous beast keeping their need for violence busy. The game can be played in two modes: "sandbox" or time-limited (30', 60' and 120': the longer ones has to be unlocked). Once the time limit expires are however free to keep playing the world as a sandbox. The latter allows to obtain achievements which in turn unlock more resources and projects, or the longer time limits. That's quite nice because ensures that your understanding of the game grows hand in hand with its possibilities. "Art direction" is at top level, both graphics and music. So, why not 5 stars? Well, the lack of an in-game "encyclopedia" is somewhat nasty because there are many trasmutation to remember and this would help when planning ahead

This is definitely not a game like any other. The mechanics are unique and fun to play around with... for some time. Three hours into playing this game, and I feel it's running out of steam. I don't regret having bought it though. It was definitely worth the experience, and for people who are a bit more into optimizing things than I, this might be just the thing.

Overall a good game, but after an hour or two, the game repeats itself and it gets booring. The timelimit of 30 hours really also does not belong there.