Reus review

by Piyoz on Feb 24th, 2014

My second endeavor into the ever-expanding world of indie PC games lies in the placid arms of Reus. Reus is a world simulator created by eleven-man Dutch game development team Abbey Games.

In Reus, you control four giants as you shape and morph a barren world to support life. The Ocean Giant creates oceans. The Rock Giant creates mountains. The Swamp Giant creates swamp and I’ll give you one guess what the Forest Giant does. Each giant can also place resources like plants, animals and minerals that vary based on ecosystem (forest, swamp, or desert). When there are enough resources on the ground, a village of NPC’s will appear. The goal of the game is to help the tiny people of these villages expand, develop, and complete special Projects. Their success is measured in Food, Wealth, and Technology, all retrieved from stuff that your Giants punch into the ground.

I’m making this all sound simple. Reus is anything but simple. You could just go and plant some Blueberries and spawn some Rabbits. Those would provide Food for your villagers to eat. However, every resource in this game has Symbiosis. If you just place Salt Mines and Marlin willy-nilly, you’re not going to get the most out of your creations. Specific Animals, Plants, and Minerals need to be within range of certain OTHER resources to gain bonuses.

For example, one Topaz plot gives you ten Wealth on its own. Read the little box at the top right and you’ll notice that that mine will give you twelve extra Wealth if it’s next to a Plant! Sweet! So you spawn some Elderberry right next to the Mine. Now you have twenty-two Wealth from that one Topaz! Here’s where it gets complicated.

As your villages grow and populate, they will begin special Projects. Projects demand a certain amount of Food, Wealth, and Tech or some other requirements. When you complete Projects, the humans will start giving you ambassadors. These little guys sit on top of the shoulders of your Giants and grant you extra powers. These powers are called Aspects. Aspect powers let you upgrade your resources. You can add extra Food to Animals. Or maybe extra Wealth to your Minerals. Stuff like that. Upgrading your resources the right way can transmute them into other resources.

Remember that Topaz next to your Elderberry? You used a Noble Aspect from the Rock Giant on that Topaz. Now it transmuted into Onyx! Now it yields fourteen wealth! But wait. It was just giving me twenty-two Wealth (ten plus an extra twelve)! What happened? Well, by changing the resource, you lost the symbiosis. Onyx doesn’t have an extra bonus when next to a Plant. By transmuting, you actually ended up with less Wealth. Get it? It’s not about upgrading everything to the max. It’s about planting the right things in the right place for maximum efficacy. And often that includes NOT upgrading things.

The amount of thinking and planning involved in Reus is impressive. But it’s not enough to overload you with information. The visuals of this game are very simple and use basic colors. Animations are slow and steady. The soundtrack is almost entirely atmospheric, with hardly any melodies at all. You can pause the game at any time to look over your world and strategize. Very peaceful. Very pensive.

Well, it’s peaceful and pensive most of the time. If you give one village too many resources, they will become greedy. When their greed becomes too strong, they might invade another village and go to war! Or if you ignore a village too long, they will form an army and attack the Giants! Turns out the villagers can actually kill Giants. I’ve never had it happen to me, but if my villagers started attacking me, I’d bring over my Rock Giant and crush their buildings under my enormous stone fists!

Like achievements? Good, because this game is built around them. New Animals, Minerals, and Plants are unlocked by completing on-planet Projects or by accomplishing various tasks in the timed mode.

If I have any beef with this game, it’s the way that Projects work. The game randomly starts Projects in each village without warning or choice on the part of the player. The Project takes up one plot of land, potentially destroying the precious ecosystem and the balance of resources. There are achievements I haven’t unlocked because that game has never given me the right Projects. I can’t choose how I want to develop my villages. This prevents me from unlocking a new Animal or Mineral.

All in all, there’s a lot to enjoy in Reus. It’s a small word sim with a pleasant atmosphere and a very complex system to master. Make sure to put on your thinking caps if you’re going to load this up. It took me eight hours before I really got the hang of creating symbioses. It’s worth the ten dollars that Steam is charging.

4/5
Complex but rewarding

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