Have you ever wanted to be a god? One with a sense of humour, perhaps.
Back at the turn of the century (gosh, doesn’t that sound like an awful long time ago), there was a rash of humorous video games where you played as a god, granting boons to and inflicting misery on your worshippers, but there were no board games, at least none I was aware of, until now… Keen Bean Studio has just launched the Kickstarter campaign for their latest game, Almighty: The Godliest God Game, in which 1–4 players compete for belief and glory. The rulebook opening ought to give you an idea of the style of the game: ‘Outrageous sacrilege! These puny mortals would dare worship other gods?! This won't do at all! Everyone knows that YOU are the most glorious deity in the cosmos. Time to bring your full power to bear, and prove once and for all that you deserve the throne…of the ALMIGHTY!’
Designed and illustrated by Malachi Ray Rempen, Almighty has the same appealing, quirky artwork as his previous games, the entertaining Power Vacuum and award-winning Roll Camera!
Gameplay Summary
You play as one of 4 gods, each with unique powers: the God of the Sun (and Light, Heat, Fire), who can move a sun token across the board in order to gain extra Belief when taking actions in the region containing the token; the God of Love (and Fertility, Beauty, Passion), who gains Power by pairing up Mortals with hearts of love; the God of Storms (and Thunder, Wind, Rain), who relies on Thunderclouds to provide energy for actions, but needs to blow them into the right board regions ahead of time; and the God of the Dead (and the Underworld, the Afterlife, Rebirth), who gains Power when other gods kill Mortals, and can resurrect them to take actions.
Gameplay takes place on a cute fabric scroll board, which is split into 4 separate regions—islands, forests, mountains and deserts—in which the Mortals live, toil and suffer, with a Graveyard (not used if the God of the Dead is in play) at one end and the Glory (i.e., score) track at the other.
On their turn, players place up to 2 Act cards from their deck onto regions in the board, affecting the Mortals there. Some of these actions are common to most of the gods: create a Mortal, which adds a Mortal card to the appropriate region; poke a Mortal, which activates the ability of the selected Mortal; bless or curse a Mortal, increasing or decreasing its Glory value; tempt or banish a Mortal, to move it between regions; and smite a Mortal, killing it (sending it to the Graveyard, or into the hands of the God of the Dead). A player can choose to forgo the standard action and play a card face down, which activates the powers specific to their god instead. Besides Mortals, regions can contain Huts, which add additional Glory to that region.
When all players have used up their decks of Act cards, the current round finishes, and the Glory point value of each region is awarded to whoever has most Belief in that region. Players can also gain points from Prophecy cards—private end of round objectives. After 3 rounds, the game finishes.
A solo/cooperative mode is provided by an amusingly named Mortal Free Will automa (because the Mortals aren’t being controlled by any god), which can be played with a range of difficulty settings.
Round Up
A huge amount of the appeal of the game comes from the Mortals, with names such as Martyr (you gain Belief when smiting them), Pyromaniac (when poked, these guys will destroy a Hut), and Heretic (removes Glory). My favourite is the Skeptic (yeah, I know, ought to be Sceptic this side of the pond) who reduces the level of Belief in a region.
I just love the artwork (labelled as pre-release currently, so may change), and the whole game is laugh-out-loud entertaining.
The campaign page includes links to the draft rulebook, a Tabletop Simulator mod, and a goodly number of review and playthrough videos.
A mini-expansion, Maniacs & Monsters, is available too, providing additional, somewhat extreme, Mortals (such as the eponymous Maniac) and a range of non-human creatures (e.g., Mermaid and Demon) which do something not clearly defined to ‘deepen gameplay for experienced deities,’ whatever that means.
Other campaign extras are add-ons for Roll Camera!—an odd addition to this campaign. Not the base game, just add-ons.
If Almighty: The Godliest God Game tickles your fancy, be aware that you will have to indulge in crowdfunding to acquire it, as ‘Almighty will not have a traditional retail release.’ However, a Print and Play download is available, for a mere $5 (what’s more, you can get that in June this year, while the physical copies aren’t available until next).
Coincidently…
I opened with a comment about how godly video games were a thing for a period at the beginning of the century, and then they seemed to vanish (or maybe I stopped looking). Oddly, two other godly board games have popped up (or rather, at time of writing, are about to pop up) on crowdfunding sites: For the Gods!, a snappy and somewhat more serious game is launching on Kickstarter later this month, though in this one, you play as mortals not gods; and Gods & Mortals, where you play as Olympian gods, manipulating mortals below, will land on Gamefound sometime soon.
I wonder what it is that’s making god games attractive at the moment. Maybe it’s just coincidence. For what it’s worth, based on the limited information available currently, I reckon Almighty will be the most entertaining and fun of this trio, but I recommend keeping an eye on all of them.
About the author
When not playing boardgames or blogging about them, L.N. Hunter keeps himself occupied writing fiction: a comic fantasy novel, The Feather and the Lamp, sits alongside close to 100 short stories in various magazines and anthologies, and on websites and podcasts (see https://linktr.ee/L.N.Hunter for a full list). L.N. occasionally masquerades as a software developer or can be found unwinding in a disorganised home in Carlisle, UK, along with two cats and a soulmate.
