From the name alone you might expect Godville to be a shameless melange of elements from ultra-successful casual games like GodFinger or FarmVille. While Godville does run from a web browser or an iPhone App, the similarities end there. To be honest, that’s about where Godville’s similarities to any game end because it’s more of an ever-changing, user-defined, hands-off fantasy storybook than anything else.
At first I thought it was going to be a text adventure like Zork or a choose-your-own-adventure style game but I quickly realized there isn’t even that much control over things. After you’ve created your account as a God and named your human hero things pretty much run on their own indefinitely. What you see is tantamount to being Dungeon Master in a tabletop game with stats and gear laid out in either a customizable web page or the tabbed iPhone App. The most addictive part of this is your Hero’s diary. Every thirty seconds or so you’ll get randomly generated updates (all in text form) on what your Hero is doing. All of these entries, from enemy and items to Quests and idle thoughts, are created by Godville players and new texts go live almost weekly.
Think of it like a text adventure version of LittleBigPlanet; the collective ideas of the world building a game for everyones’ Heroes to fumble through. An Ideabox form makes it simple to offer your own monsters, items, quests, or other inspirations and at any time you can easily highlight almost any text to offer corrections. Godville is admittedly “translated from Russian by non-native English speakers”. The more submissions you make and the more that are approved, the higher you rise in the game’s version of Learderboards, the Pantheons.
But even if you don’t feel like being creative there’s still a lot to love about Godville. Since it’s sourced by the current crop of early adopters (request a Beta invite here) the game reads like an insane world where pop culture and fantasy cliches have collided. One minute you’ll be running from the ORLY Owl and the next you’ll have defeated a Millennium Falcon and found a pair of Tinky Winky’s Mittens. It also requires almost no effort from you, just check in to the website or app every now and then to see if your Hero has leveled up, what new quests they’re on, or if they’ve met an untimely demise. Go too long without tossing your divine powers around to resurrect them and your Hero may be wiped from the servers as inactive.
I admit, even in the week I’ve spent putting off this post I’ve neglected my Hero, Karyn Slainwrath, pretty heavily but I don’t feel too bad. She’s out there on her own, living her life in crazy Pop Culture Land like a virtual Angela Chase while I, in true divine fashion, get distracted by all the other flashy, pretty things in the world. I check in from time to time to see what she’s up to, throw a little Encouragement or a simple text message her way (the only direct control, err, influence you have) and go about my Heavenly business… or I just go back to work. However much time I spend with Godville, though, it continues to entertain and I recommend you check it out too because the more of us there are, the better it gets.
