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The first two achievements I unlock in god game Masters of Albion are very telling. The first is awarded for throwing a worker over 25 meters with my deity's disembodied hand. An accident, I promise – even godhood comes with growing pains. The second achievement is for ordering my village's factory to stuff its pies with rats. What can I say? Buy cheap, get cheap.
Over the years, the god game genre has ceded territory to a flourishing sim scene. But there's significant overlap. In Masters of Albion your initial goal is to raise a small village from neglect, restoring its economy and expanding across Albion by day, safeguarding its borders from supernatural threats by night. Think Manor Lords, except you enjoy a physical presence as a floating hand that can scoop up denizens, launch fireballs, raise buildings, and roll comically large boulders through hordes of zombies.
I've been lording over Masters of Albion's early access launch in my spare time, and although it's currently struggling with performance issues, the game's freedom-driven systems already show significant promise.
The old gods and the new
Masters of Albion lets you play god, but Peter Molyneux proves benevolence is optional
Even with godly powers, Masters of Albion leaves plenty of work cut out for you. The run-down village of Oakridge is a small patch of green in the mist-shrouded lands, and you can't directly interact with anything where the fog has settled.
Oakridge itself is in pieces: its smattering of buildings are dismantled, Lego-style, and sit in useless chunks until you bric-a-brac them back together. Worldly creation in Masters of Albion is less Garden of Eden, more yanking the pull cord of a stubborn lawnmower until it sputters to life. Every cog has its place: farms supply mills, which in turn keep flour flowing to factories, which can be put to work fulfilling orders for food, weapons, and more.
A factory's output must be tailored for each order. You may be given a vague hint as to what sort of pie the client would like, for example, but it's up to you to select its ingredients and consider how much you're willing to spend on them. Prices are constantly in flux, which means yesterday's moldy bread can be today's premium moldy bread. I'm guilty of bending my factory's standards to save a buck: if a nearby lord orders a batch of sandwiches I'll make sure to use fresh bread and decent fillings, but for a bulk order of 75 pies to feed the poor? It's rat chunks in rat stock, but at least the pastry seems fluffy.
The industry must flow: besides making a profit, completing orders grants resources that can be spent in branching unlock trees – though unlocking new god powers requires harvesting dark energy from dead baddies.
I've taken to picking up my ragdoll-hero by the arm and flinging him into a branched wall
As your domain expands, so too do your responsibilities. Keeping Oakridge stocked with weapons and armor means reclaiming the nearby mining village of Wyrmscar, which in turn requires hiring a hero to do your dirty work beyond the fog, as they can take on quests and reclaim swathes of Albion by standing on magical pedestals.
Heroes are powerful fighters and can also be possessed, allowing you to take control of a character in third-person. It's gimmicky – combat is barebones, and getting involved in the flesh feels like busywork when I should have my eye on the bigger picture. Still, I like that you can. Much of Masters of Albion (and Molyneux's past work) is about making fantasy tangible, minimizing the barriers between imagination and play, and while my fantasy revolves around raising a society, others may be drawn to the more hands-on facets of godhood.
A bolt from above
Likewise, there are numerous options for defending your land at night. Each day only ends when you're ready, so there's no time pressure, but sundown is still deceptively hard to survive – if your crypt-home takes too much damage, it's game over.
You can see where each night's attacks will come from, but later in the game there are enough threats to spread your attention thin. Turrets and wall fortifications are helpful for controlling the flow of baddies, but you can only build during the day, and on several occasions I've taken to picking up my ragdoll-hero by the arm and flinging him into a branched wall to plug the gap (with the latest weapon I've cheaped out on at the factory).
Still, this is very much an early access game. The current build struggles with the odd bug, but worse are its performance issues. I consistently run below 30fps on a 5070 GPU, yet it runs smoothly on a 2080. Developer 22cans also left early access game Godus unfinished, which leaves me cautious to recommend anything I can't prod with my fat god finger.
What I can say is that Masters of Albion's ambition is clear, it has an easy charm, and I've seen enough proof in the rat-pudding to feel good about what it already offers. Is that enough for you? I suppose it's a matter of faith.
The best city builders feel a lot like Masters of Albion... but with a little bit less divine cruelty
