Reus was [yet another] one of the indie games I had read about, had an interest in playing, and waited for its release on Humble Bundle. I haven’t played a lot of building simulations, maybe a small dabbling with Civ4, but I found the simplicity of Reus on the surface to be enticing enough to draw me in. I enjoyed my time with Reus, which has a good amount of goals to reach, but about half way through those goals, I lost interest. Not in a bad way, but I reached the point of not playing for a week and didn’t have the desire to pick it up. Perhaps months down the road, I’ll want to pick it up again, but for now I’ll consider it “completed.”

In Reus, you have control over four giants or gods of the world: Rock, Swamp, Ocean, and Forest. A tutorial series introduces you to the mechanics of the world, including basic actions (e.g., moving the giants and using their powers), the result of certain actions (e.g., planting a fruit plant in the forest draws nomads to start villages), and the basics of progression (e.g., evolving a blueberry to a strawberry).

After you complete the tutorial, you are let loose to build the world to your liking. To start off, you have to turn wasteland, which is the world at the very beginning of the game, into habitable ecosystems/biomes. The Rock giant raises mountains and levels oceans. The result of raising mountains result in deserts. The Ocean giant makes oceans which then allows for the Forest giant and the Swamp giant to make forests and swamps respectively. Once you have a biome, you can start planting plants (Forest or Swamp), creating minerals (Rock), or making animal nests (Swamp or Ocean).

By creating any of these resources (plant, mineral, or animal nest), you invite a nomad to settle and start a village. Villages have periodic projects/goals and if you meet them, you gain an extra boost to your village or the world at large. For example, meeting the Granary challenge (which requires x amount of food) will provide a set amount of food for your village and may even increase the amount of food of any plant within the village’s boundaries. The bonuses vary. In addition to meeting a village goal, you’ll gain an ambassador for one of your giants. Which ever giant you choose for the ambassador will gain new powers or increased powers.

You have three “eras” which just correspond to how long your game will last (30 minutes, 60 minutes, 120 minutes). After completing the tutorial era, you have access to the first, 30 minute era. You unlock each era by meeting a certain number of goals. These goals add challenge and help direct the focus of your play session. For example, building a village that only relies on minerals and plants to survive is one goal. In addition, each goal comes with a “prize” of sorts that unlocks a new plant, mineral, or animal you can play with.

I can go deeper into the complexities of the game progression, like adding boosts to your plants to evolve them into something else (recall the blueberry to strawberry example), matching synergies between two resources to get extra bonuses (e.g., chickens produce more food if they are near blueberries), or choosing to destroy villages. But, that is too deep for a simple review of the game. Instead, these complexities add to the richness of the game. Enough that it’s tempting to say it’s theorycraft-able, but I think the spreadsheets would be more helpful in determining which route you want to focus on such as an animal- and mineral-dependent world or plant- and mineral-dependent.

The most difficult part to the game was the randomization of the village projects. At least, I found it was somewhat random but there may be underlying rules that determine what projects pop up. When I had planned to reach an era goal of 1000 food, for example, sometimes the village projects preferred other resources so I would have to sacrifice my plants and/or animals to meet those goals.

Aside from the gameplay, the whimsical, cartoony art style was leaning more towards simple, matching the game itself. The animations are also quite simple, but they mesh well with the style set for the game. Even the idle animations for the giants are endearing.

The music and audio tracks are also well enough in the background so they aren’t annoyingly prominent, but they are also somehow memorable. Like the background tune music or the sound effect of the Forest giant sneezing as he is idle. Even the disappointed “Aww” of a failed village project. It’s not quite whimsical, but it’s definitely not serious like the Civilization series.

I found Reus enjoyable. It was the perfect game to play after the stress of Element4l, but I think once I calmed down enough, the game lost its appeal. I found the 30- and 60-minute eras were perfect to fill up my evenings after work and even an hour or two over the weekend, but the 120-minute era was just too long. Even with the ability to save, I would forget what I was in the middle of.

I would recommend this game to people who need something more low-key to play. It was engaging as you are constantly strategizing and restrategizing to meet the goals you are trying to achieve. But, depending on how much you like to restart from scratch, it may become tedious over time.