Reus: Terraform a Planet With Cute Giant Monsters, Man

Reus the God Game by Abbey Games

Here’s a God game (think Populous from 1989 and all that) with an orbital angle. You get a full planet and can whizz around it in style.

Chillout simulation games like this are very big in the world of indie titles. This one from Abbey Games in Utrecht, Holland, launched back in May 2013. But it’s still a fun time of it if you’re looking for something calming.

Reus the Cute God Game

Okay, this thing is out on PX, PS4, and Xbox One!

Recently we took a look at Stray Fawn Studio’s The Wandering Village (2022) and its focus on relaxing strategy stuff.

Reus is somewhat similar, but with FOUR elemental giants to look after. Your goal is to guide them around a 2D planet (Flatland style) and build out resources to support the humans who emerge.

There’s a 2002 episode of Futurama called Godfellas where Bender ends up lost and floating in space. He eventually has small humans growing across his body and he tries to manage them all (although it ends in disaster and all the mini-humans are wiped out).

Reus is a bit like that (the game’s name in Latin means “wrongdoing, wrongful conduct”).

You support the planet’s ecosystem by using elemental giants of water, land, mountains, and swamps. You must go forth and balance out these regions of land, ensuring humans can build, eat, and prosper.

Where things get more complex is how you influence Reus.

If you overload the region with resources, for example, and ensure excess is available the humans will become greedy. This can lead to warfare between different villages.

However, Reus is definitely at the lower end of strategy game difficulty. It’s more of a chilled out time of it with fewer things to manage than in the more full-on efforts (such as the hypnotic Factorio from 2016).

The level of challenge will affect your view of the experience.

You do have the freedom to control the way the game flows, moving towards a casual lark or a more serious push towards success and glory. But it can get repetitive, not helped by a fiddly synergies and transmutations system that takes some getting used to (and the tutorial doesn’t clear things up).

The gaming press latched on to that in 2013 and Reus met with mixed reviews.

Positive… but mixed. IGN handed over 6.8/10, whereas Destruction gave it a rather splendid 9/10. It’s really one you have to dive into and see for yourself.

For us? At its best we found it rather swoon worthy! It looks neat, has an excellent soundtrack, and the gameplay isn’t overly challenging. Yet it delivers lots of relaxed oohs and ahhs as you progress. Spiffing!

The Reus Ritual of a Soundtrack

Reus also has a great little soundtrack by composer Joni van der Leeuw. He’s also a producer, agent, and consultant in marketing, business, and production.

On his blog, he’s noted he has bipolar disorder (and a bout of cancer in 2020):

“I straightened up and committed. I committed to the pills, committed to all the blood tests that come with it, and committed to owning the disorder by telling people close to me about it and now by telling you about it.

And you know what? It worked. And it still works. I’m definitely not done, as I’m just climbing out of a nasty depression preceded by an even nastier period of (hypo)mania. But I have also experienced extended periods of stability in the last six months, and I have experienced what it is like to be triggered by either depression or mania and not automatically spiral in that direction. I know now that I don’t have to do that. There’s a healthier alternative, one I can actually keep up with. And I’m really happy about that. Happy in a calm, non-explosive kind of way.”

It’s another example of someone using creativity as a cathartic release from their issues, as this is a lot for anyone to deal with at a young age.

And his work on this soundtrack is fantastic. It’s very melodic, but has a tinge of melancholia to it.

It has a bit of a LostWinds (2008) vibe with the music.

A criticism would be that it’s a bit samey across its whole, but we can’t complain too much. This is a lovely work and rather relaxing, suiting the chilled out nature of the God stuff.