Which old God Game was your favourite? B&W, Pop, or Spore? And seriously, if you haven't seen my other upcoming games lists, you're missing out! Playlist here: ru-vid.com/group/PLYVqUDxY6COh7bkuJoBb1koNRX7mAX2yp
I have only played Black and White back in the day and I loved it. I'm immensely disappointed that we do not have a Black and White 3 or a Black and White 4. the god game genre is severely underrepresented.
@@grasshopper1153 Yeah, I read there were ideas all the way up to B&W 7 where it would be modern day. I suspect the problem was Peter Molyneux, he's notorious for overpromising and mismanaging, and I think games from Bullfrog and Lionhead succeeded in spite of him, not because of him. Black & White 2 even shipped with an apology letter in a notepad document. Extra evident with ex-Bullfrog devs becoming Two Point Studios and succeeding with Two Point Hospital. Those devs are great, I have a feeling Molyneux kept driving things into the ground.
I hope we get some additional games inspired by Black and White. I had so much fun with those games and it honestly bothers me that there aren’t many games like it. I’ll forever remember the game whispering my name, making me think I was crazy 😂
yeah, why are all the old games better than the current junk that is put out? sure those games might have had weaker graphics, but the gameplay was so much better back in those days.
After playing some games in VR i concluded Black and White would be a perfect VR game if it come out now. Grabbing things as interaction, drawing the symbols to cast spells, an animal companion you can pet... Everything
I got stuck on the first island in every game I ever played of Black & White no matter how I played (the stone quest, specifically, and yes I did look up walkthroughs, the game was bugged) but these look interesting.
Yay, another mention of my game! Even if version 1.0 of Elysian Eclipse won't exceed Spore, which will very likely be the case, me and my team will keep expanding it with free updates, making it a little better every time! It has been a lot of fun working on this project so far. ^^
If it even gets halfway to Spore but stays in development people would love it. I don't think anyone expects an indie to surpass a multimillion dollar game on day 1. The Stardew Valley approach can be very popular where it's a pretty good game that just gets better over time so eventually everyone owns it lol
it is absolutely wild to me that we haven't gotten a game like Black & White. There's so much potential in the idea and with the today's technology you'd assume we'd at least have a bunch of failed attempts and maybe one that would be a spiritual successor. But to me even Fata Deum isn't picking it up, because to me what was the most Black & White about Black & White was the Creature. I'm left with playing the original games in loop forever I guess...
I never got the appeal of the Creature, it seemed like a random and unfitting element for me, but I agree on Fata Deum not capturing the magic of Black and White, which for me was about the sense of wonder, you would explore the island and everywhere you would find new fun stories with new fun stuff to do which never failed to surprise and entertain. What I'm seeing in Fata Deum is just an RTS dressing up as Black and White.
Well, the big studios are all into MMOs and mobile scam games because that's where the money is. And the indies don't have the funds/dev power to pull it off. Back then god games were just one of many genres that were explored and whoever made one didn't have much competition. More importantly, the audience was dedicated "real" gamers. Meanwhile gaming is mainstream, millions and millions of players of all kinds and that means also thousands and thousands of small and big studios trying their luck. They suffocate each other and if you try your hand on a niche genre you won't have big budgets. But you kind of need one for a modern Black&White, especially if the graphics should also be up to date. Let's be honest here, the games of this list all look like they are 10-20 years old.
What I miss in games is one that picks up the mechanic of Black and White's avatar's. With our current level of AI it would be much easier to have a game where in you raise and teach your own creature/thing to act on your behalf.
crazy how nearly 10+ years later and Spore still has such a huge effect on this genre. I know this has been said a million times but it is a tragedy that EA killed Maxis Studio...imagine what a Spore 2 on Unity 5 would be like? Legit a dream game and it's so sad we will never get Spore 2 unless someone pays EA a shit ton of money to take the IP away from them.
I don't think the IP is all that important, it's just making a proper successor would cost tens of millions at least. Don't have to buy the name though, War for the Overworld worked out without buying the Dungeon Keeper IP.
The main reason for people not liking tribal and furder phazes in spore was that they were very very unfinished. Of ourse a lot of folks would prefer funny animals parts of game either way but also Spore was striped of the chance to reach it's full potential due to very rushed dedlines. Thanks EA. I hope elysian eclipse will fix that. Crossing my fingers for the developers.
One of my yearly Christmas tradition is to binge these lists you make while adding games to my wishlist. Always looking forward to these every year, thanks for making these!
black and white 2 (never played 1) was actually my favorite city builder. It was so simple, but your cities could look impressive. The impressiveniss score with the high ground bonus and diminishing returns was great. every city builder or colony sim nowadays is way too gritty ;v I don't care what "Adam" is good at or what his skills are
Thanks for the nice video! In fact Thrive looks exactly like something I've been wanting for a long time! My favorite was the classic Black & White! Nothing was better than ripping out a few trees, putting them on fire with the fireball, place a large bolder on it, wait till it's glowing hot and pick it up / fling it toward the enemy temple! 🤣🤣They never see these long range artillery strikes coming...
Thrive is criminally underrated, it easily has the most potential out of all the games in the list by far Plus, even though it will take a decade or more to be finished, by the time aware stage is complete it will already be the mother of all evolution games with the amount of possibilities
One game I had a lot of fun with in the 90s was Creatures. Little creatures that had genetics, biochemistry and a simple neurological system, they would play and eat and mate and all this stuff. Wandered around in a kind of terrarium. You could teach them basic commands... it was a very interesting game. The last one was ages ago, once in awhile I look to see if anyone has made something like it but nothing hits the mark.
I backed Universim with the highest tier that was available almost a decade ago, and have been staying completely hands-off until launch. The footage I saw here looks exactly like what I'd hoped for
Yeah I just checked, the first time I mentioned Universim in a video was 2014. It's just about reaching 10 years of development, it looks a lot more than when I last played too.
It reminded me of a concept that’s popped up a few times in books I’ve read and I’d love to see actually made one day. Essentially a Competitive God Sim. Imagine this: you and many other people find lands to rule as gods and people who worship you, you act in their interest and mold them to your own interest sort of like Black and White. They advance and grow and depending on how you mold your chosen people is how they’ll react to the people of other Gods. You do not actively control people like an RTS but you can affect the world around them in accordance with your influence.
Populous, Black and White and...Spore? One of these are not like the others ;D Definitely most interested in Fata Deum, looks like the successor to B&W that we never got!
Well 'God Game' doesn't exactly have a hard definition haha. I'd throw SimEarth into it as well. Generally games where you control living things from a higher form perspective. Pop and B&W you're actually a god in-game, Spore you basically act as a god but from a slightly more scientific perspective.
@@GamerZakh I think it's reasonable to put Spore in there, although ironic given the evolution aspect. It's certainly a lot more accurate than most stuff that gets tagged as Tower Defence on Steam, and is in first person or doesn't contain any towers, or isn't top down. More people should flag Tags on games that abuse them, maybe Steam does actually remove tags that get reported a lot.
@@jonevansauthor The tags on Steam are by users, so if a game has a high tag for a thing, it's because a lot of people are tagging the game as that. How accurate or inaccurate a game's tags are are based on the users, so Steam views it as a self-solving problem. If 90% of players tag a game as 'Tower Defence', that's what most people think it is so when people search for 'Tower Defence' they find that game. Even if the game isn't a Tower Defence game, 9/10 people who are looking for Tower Defence want to find that game, so search works as the users expect.
@@GamerZakh honestly I assumed that the developer got to add tags they identified with to kick it off. But if they don't, that just makes it even worse and gamers need to stop adding made up tags to things that are wrong because it's shooting themselves in the foot. There's zero point tagging things incorrectly and no limit to how many genres we're allowed to have in gaming. They could just make up new tags. Regardless, it needs to stop and I give Valve zero brownie points for their implementation. It still better than the Epic, Apple or Google stores but that's not saying err... I was going to say much but I'll go with anything at all.
@@jonevansauthor Devs are also users, so they can suggest a few at the start, but once the public finds the game they'll overwhelm the initial tags with what they want. It's why my lists are successful haha. Anyone can go to Steam and search 'Upcoming FPS' and get 300 results. I carefully curate, so the 15-50 games I list in each video make a lot more sense. Even if not everyone 100% agrees with my genre curation, I always at least have reasons for why I do or don't include certain games.
Microcivilization is my friend's game, he works on it by himself, he gave me beta to try and I lost instantly 13 hours to it. That good it is! Thanks Gamerzakh to include it!
Oh a new black and white would have been so cool ! And a new populous... Well, I'm pretty sure Peter Molyneux has a "great" idea for his next game =/ It might even change the life of some people. A new spore would have been fun if EA didn't kill Maxis... I really loved Dark Spore too even though it went through hell. I kickstarted Fata Deum and I can't get to like the game at this point, it has some mechanics I don't enjoy.
16:27 me trying to remember that game similar to this "doodle god universe" where you combine basic elements to make more elements to combine: *meme dude thinking intensely* (it's doodle god, it was an old flash game, there were also doodle devil, but kinda the same games)
It's not doodle god, it's older. Doodle god is based on a 90s game called Alchemy. The one I'm thinking of is a flash game that released before 2007 (because I played it in high school) and doodle god released in 2010. It was likely an Alchemy clone.
Oh it's a really good time to discover universim haha. I first listed it in my very first list videos in 2014, it's been a long time waiting for it to get close to finished.
Thank you for this video, God games were one of my favourite genres back then. I honesty wish Black and White gets remastered, but that will never happen as long as the EA overlords are holding the IP.
@@Hurricayne92 Big publishers aren't about free money, it's about maximum money. They could invest in a remaster and make a few hundred thousand dollars, but why bother when a new simple Sims 4 DLC will earn millions?
The problem I have with them now is the same as most other games with competition. They all tend to become the 'same' with only a different 'skin' and theme. Right now I'm enjoying both the simplicity and ARTISTIC value of Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth (no EA license anymore - download from online archives.) and Planetbase from Madrugaworks. Not all games need to be the same or overly complicated if your premise is sound and the experience is pleasant. Indie's, like any new industry are finally starting to get some legs.
I hate to say it Zakh as I really do like you and your channel and have been watching over 5 years, but I much prefer this type of video you do. You really are the best out there at delivering in brief a look at the top games in X. I think you should focus and stick to this with only a fewer lets plays.
Hey you don't have to hate to say it, it's really kind of you to say haha, thank you. Before this I struggled making these kind of videos without burning out, which is why they were so limited. This year I think I found a technique that's not as mind breaking lol, so I'm seeing how far I can take it this time.
Thr #3 to #7 titles and #11 title (Ecosystem, this one which i like the look of) are really more of a sandbox evolution type as you explained in video. So maybe you could divide them into their own category in the description? - I do like The Universim and Fata Deum.
I want Black & White 1 and 2 as VR-games! I mean even the graphics look like most VR-games now. It feels like it was meant to be a VR-game, but it was made before we had the hardware.
Abbey Games, the maker of Reus, is a dutch company. Reus is the dutch word for giant. So even though it sounds fantastical in english, to me it's just a very straight forward title. 😅
It wounds my heart, that both the strategy genre RTS and the 4X along with the God game genre peaked in the early mid 2000s and a decade later we are still struggling to get anything close. Well at least the city builder genre is still thriving and RTS is making a very slow but determined come back.
Man I remember playing WorldBox before it got to all the new designs and stuff but I took a break and when I finally went back to it I was like Wow this looks completely different
speaking of god games, i'd absolutely LOVE to see something like From Dust again, there's so much potential with the hardware we have these days, i just can't stop thinking about it!!
Imagine a game like Adapt but as an MMO so people constantly adapt across the world to be stronger. But also add a breeding mechanic too it as well. So you can see your creature running across the world if it's successful
The fact that Black and White 1 and 2 haven't been remade or rebooted yet is just... it's a crime. Although, having said that... we've all seen what remakes and reboots can become so maybe it's a blessing in disguise...
Worldbox is one of the few games ive bought. But the guy is either working on something big or hes moved on to something else. It has crazy potential though.
I have a clear memory about this...both B&W and Spore were massive disappointments and we were shaming Peter Molyneux and Will Write for their over-hyped failures. 15yrs on...people seem to think they were amazing
I think thrive would be amazing when it’s finished so I hope the process speeds up. Universim is also a game I’ve been watching for a while and I don’t have PC so I can’t play it but it looks awesome
funny how a game from 1999 (Populous) has better graphics then 90 % of the games on this list, that are coming out in 2024. Also better mechanics and overall gameplay
That's because Populous was a AAA game, but publishers stopped funding god games so now they're made by like 1 person in a garage. This is usually the weird thing about comparing games across decades. It's easy to forget that many of those old games cost millions of dollars.
I don't know what happened but, there is no demo for Microcivilization anymore. Not that I can see, anyway. Which is a shame because, I was looking forward to trying it. :)
Sometimes demos come and go, usually it's because the demo is a very underdeveloped version of the game and the game has actually come a long way since, so the dev doesn't want people getting the wrong idea. But what the demo existing does mean is that there will be videos of people playing the demo at least.
Yeah I remember a lot of people played Spore until the civ stage and then they just restart from there. You can see a lot of the new games took that as a hint and only focus on half of the Spore phases. Universim is basically Spore but only the tribal phase onwards.
I checked my Steam and the demo for Fata Deum apparently left a bad enough impression on me that I put it into my ignore list. I did remember playing the demo, but I don't remember my feelings on it at the time.
@@antoniousai1989 honestly I hate this attitude. Find your own work around for a deficiency in software, don't ask companies to provide better software or hardware. Apple types do it all the time - the Magic Mouse charging situation is fine, despite it being completely unnecessary, and them having had many years to fix it with any of at least three great solutions. The reasoning? Well, if you just do this one weird trick, that makes the company producing e-waste ok because you can cope with it. Rather we should say, it would be better if Steam did let you take notes, just like Amazon wishlists do. Steam is the best, but it is FULL of UI inconsistencies and missing features and is insanely slow to serve pages. Those are real problems they could fix. Apple could fix their products, and so could other companies.
Yeah I think many took the lesson from Spore to not do every phase. Universim is basically tribal to space. Adapt is just creature. There are some games out there which are just the cell phase, but they kind of are more arcadey shooter/battle games.
Kingdoms and Castles that fully released in 2017? Why would you want a 7 year old game to be listed in an upcoming games list? It's so old I'm listing that developer's next game in my city-building list which is due in 2024.
Really wish EA would just release both Black & Whites to buy digitally. Dunno why they’re being so stingy about it. The second one was the best imo. I preferred the blending of God game/RTS and city management. Fata Deum is our best bet so far. Like you I didn’t think the demo was all that. It had a confusing UI and ran pretty poorly. Was pretty buggy too from what I remember. Hopefully it’s in better shape now.
It seems like these doomed Isles is actually closer to the original popolous than any of the other games so I am kinda perplexed by your uncertainty about whether it is a god game.
Because what people consider a god game is so varied. Many say Spore isn't a good game at all. Many wouldn't consider Pop The Beginning to be a good game but an RTS. Some consider B&W 1 a god game but B&W 2 an RTS. There's a million reasons and I could go on about it forever, just keep in mind I've gotten literally thousands of opinions over the last 10 years about genres and they're all always floating in my mind somewhere while I make these. So it seems weird why I'm cautious about some things over others but it's because you don't get all the hate directed at you.
I tried the demo for fata deum. I couldn't finish it because of some of the mechanics. Instead of people worshipping to give you the energy you needed, you have to collect or destroy ancient relics. Considering they were hidden that just wasn't fun for me. Add in a bit of a clunky tutorial where i couldn't drop wood i collected, i gave up on the demo
No but it depends how well developed early access is. Like if early access was made with bad graphics and bugs then yes I guess that would be considered upcoming. But if it already has a well polished gameplay and no major bugs then that early access wouldn’t be upcoming. But that’s just what I I’d like to think
@@Aceevan332 Which puts me in an awkward position. WorldBox has been in early access for 2 years. Is it 'well developed' enough for me to not list it? It's a punishment for me to exclude it, so I have to answer this question: Has WorldBox been developed so well in such a short time that I should punish it? If I check the Steam forums for bugs, there's still regular reports of bugs: steamcommunity.com/app/1206560/discussions/1/ The official bug report forum still has a lot of things listed too: bugbox.featureupvote.com/?order=top&filter=allexceptdone&tag= But is it not buggy enough for it to not be 'upcoming' anymore? Where do you draw the line?
Truth be told I though this genre is as dead as point and click adventure titles are. Now I'm a pretty jadded gamer by this point but hopefully this genre will at least make a slight resurgence.
Oh I mean the god game genre making a resurgence, not point and click. I know double fine productions made a couple of point and click adventures in recent years.
Of course, that's because AAA mainstream games that get a lot of funding need to make that money back, so they can't innovate. They have to focus on making money and innovation doesn't sell. No one is going to give you millions of dollars to innovate, that's risky. Good graphics cost money and money needs to be repayed.
Spore blew my mind as a kid. It was so magnificent and unique and as an adult i now know it wasnt just me being young, it truly was special. I might have to get Elysian Eclipse!
