Fata Deum: A God Sim Gone Wrong

I didn't set out to be a terrible god. Feeding the hungry, inspiring speeches, fashionable sandals—it was going to be the JC playbook all the way. But it turns out that I am not a merciful god. I'm a petty, vindictive god prone to extreme temper tantrums. At least I'd fit in perfectly in the ancient Greek pantheon—maybe Dionysus could use a sidekick? That would be handy, since I am actually looking for work, now that I've resigned from my gig in Fata Deum.

A God Sim Inspired by Black & White

Fata Deum largely models itself off Populous and, more overtly, Black & White (sans creature), where you must compete with other gods by racing to convert mortal villages through warfare and miracles. The foundations are all present: you can inspire your followers, curse them with horrible visions, pick them up and toss them around, plonk down blueprints for new buildings that will make them happy, and send them off to find glory or death in battle.

A Grind of Micromanagement

The problem is, right now, none of it is remotely fun. Unless your idea of fun is a thankless grind where mercurial mortals place endless demands on your time because they can't do anything for themselves. It's micromanagement Hell.

A Village Full of Holes

I'd just taken over a new village and started plonking down construction sites. For some inexplicable reason—and to be absolutely clear, this is a feature and not a bug—your followers will never automatically embark upon a construction project on the same day you've placed it on the map. They'll wait until the next day.

A Fiddly Role Assignment System

However! You can drag and drop them onto the site to make them start working right away. Why is this extra step required when there's a system to automate this already in place? I can only assume it's a cruel prank, forcing you to engage with the ridiculously fiddly role assignment system, which will frequently leave you dropping followers into work areas only to find they still won't work there, because you've not dropped them on the right part.

Stone, Quarries and More Frustrations

My grand vision for this newly converted village hit a speed bump: a lack of stone. And with no viable locations for a quarry near the village, I'd need some help from my primary settlement. Trades and gifts can only be activated at the end of the day, where you can send 20 of a single resource from one village to another.

A Lack of Efficiency

Another frustration. It's a theme! Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team. But it should have been OK. I had two quarries and eight miners working in my first village. Or at least I thought I did.

Confusing Mechanics

But when I flew back to it, I realised that I actually just had one working mine and two miners, because everyone else had taken the day off. Aside from hitting up the pub, there wasn't even anything for them to do. They just… hung about.

Micromanagement Gone Wild

There are certain mechanics that determine the efficiency of my mortal morons. Each has a health, energy and productivity pool that depletes over time. They also develop skills based on what work they do the most, and on top of that you'll need to concern yourself with how strong they are and what their level of comfort is.

A One-Size-Fits-All Solution

For a god sim, this level of micromanagement feels a bit much, constantly interrupting your big-picture plans. There are certain buildings that can help maintain these various numbers, but even with two pubs in my frankly-too-small-for-two-pubs village they were annoyingly underutilised.

Demons and Zombies: The Only Answer

One pub, two pubs, three pubs—it didn't matter. And it certainly didn't help that the folk working in the pubs were frequently on holiday. Sadly, the most effective way to keep worshippers energised is by clicking on them one at a time and performing miracles until your mana runs out.

The Descent into Madness

I can summon storms, sacrifice humans to conjure demons and create legions of zombies—I shouldn't be beholden to these idiots. I could feel my fall from grace sneaking up on me. I was starting to read from the Sauron playbook.

A New Path

But what really inspired my sharp turn into evil was the fact that none of my hands-on nurturing resolved my initial problem: most of my mortals were still refusing to automatically go to work. Every villager was healthy and energised, but they were still just lounging around, recuperating.

Battles: The Anticlimactic Conclusion

Fata Deum doesn't have the concept of weekends, and there's no way to track who needs time off or why, so I found myself at a loss. And it's incredibly inconsistent, too. In my second village, where expansion had been halted because they were still waiting for stone, nearly everyone was still able to find something to do.

A Raid on the System

This actually made me even madder. Are my worshippers gaslighting me? Can a god even be gaslit? Maybe I just needed a righteous war to blow off some steam.

Planes of Madness

Except I couldn't simply raise an army and send them on a raid. No, that would be too straightforward. Like sending gifts or trading, raids can only be planned when everyone's in bed.

A Turning Point: The Descent into Evil

The logic behind this is that you're manipulating mortals via their dreams. Which is weird, because I can send mortals visions while they are awake, and I can directly force them to do things during the day.

Battles Are Over

I really wanted this invasion to go ahead, though. I had not yet given up on being a pleasant god (to my own followers), but all these frustrations had given me a desire for bloodshed. So I waited until night, sent them some violent dreams, and then watched my tiny army march off in the morning.

Battles: A Quick Fix

Battles are largely hands-off affairs, though you can bolster the odds by having a demon join the ranks, or by using some negative miracles to harm your foes. Unfortunately, battles are both hard to parse and incredibly anticlimactic.

One-Size-Fits-All Victory

Soldiers messily hack away at each other for a wee while, a winner is then declared, after which the victorious troops just stand around celebrating while resources are magically drained from the enemy village and immediately transferred to the invading village.

A Lack of Counter-Attacks

This means battles are a one-and-done kinda deal. There's no time for counter attacks, and you can't chase the raiders down to get your stuff back.

Descent into Darkness: The Last Resort

There's only one thing left to do at this point. Fine, I'll be evil. I sacrificed some villagers to summon some demons, and I murdered a bunch of folks and raised them as zombies.

The Consequences of Evil

This freaked the mortals out a bit, at first, but things soon went back to normal because, it turns out, demons and zombies aren't that scary. In fact, they're kind of boring.

A Conclusion: Fata Deum's Failure

The game is broken in so many ways, and the lack of a decent alternative means that it fails to deliver on its promise of a rich and immersive god sim experience. If you want a god sim with depth and complexity, keep looking.