While Digital Chocolate’s has recently released two Millionaire City reskins, Hollywood City and Vegas City, it has another new title that’s completely original. The new game is Island God, which follows a Black and White-style premise in having players become the deity of humans lost in the middle of the ocean.
With a quaint style and a curious morality system, Island God is certainly a high quality social game. It does give off the impression, early on, of being a Facebook version of GodFinger, and takes a little bit of time to truly stand out and differentiate itself. But in the end, Island God stands out on its own merits.
The premise of Island God is that a group of tribal people were wiped out by a great storm, with the few survivors scattered among various islands. The player controls one such island as the local deity, with all the trials, tribulations, and powers that implies.
Despite the godly powers, much of Island God boils down to resource management consisting of coins, food, wood, stone, energy, and science (there is also a virtual currency called Crystals). Following a handful of quests at a time that act as a guide, players build up their island society. In order to do so, they must assign villagers to certain duties by literally picking them up and plopping them down on a job site.
These sites come in the form of various structures, with each producing a different form of currency. In order to earn stone, one needs a quarry; wood requires a woodcutter; coin is earned from worshipping totems. Each structure will provide the player with a means of producing its product over a set amount of time that ranges anywhere from three minutes to a day or more. The longer the job, the more is earned. All three of these resources are necessary, as they allow the player to construct the different buildings that are unlocked later on.
Players also have an energy resource, which is consumed whenever god powers are invoked, and slowly recharges over time. The higher level the player, the more total energy is available. Using a god ability on a working villager will allow the job they are doing to finish instantly. However, the length of the job will determine how much energy an instant finish will cost. For example, a three minute job would take one energy, while an eight hour job takes over 30 minutes.
Beyond instant job completion, players can also use their godly abilities to clear trees, weeds, and creatures from the island as well as activate special decorative elements (more on that in a second). What is of particular interest is that there are two means of invoking these powers: Bless and Smite. While they both perform the same function, the former is good, while the latter is evil. The key difference, aside from a different visual effect, is that successive usage will affect the morality of the player in-game, which is displayed via horns or a halo on the user’s leaderboard portrait. Though we are far too low level to notice yet, the game also states that being good or evil will affect how one’s island will look as it grows.
As for the decorative elements, these include things like fires, food baskets, torches, and so on. Many of these items can be lit up, filled with food, or manipulated in some other way to grant the player extra experience, coins, or food. Food is of significant use, as it’s used as a currency to purchase “offerings” that will replenish a small portion of one’s energy.
The last resource is science, and though we have not unlocked it yet, once players reach a certain level, they will be able to construct a “Research Hut,” at which a villager can research different tools (such as an axe). Once researched, these tools will improve the amount of other resources — coin, stone, wood, etc. — gathered by workers. Besides researched structures, there are other buildings, like totems, that will augment resource production or the island society.
Obviously this is a lot to do, so villagers, in essence are a resource too, produced by building houses. Of course, there is only so much physical space on the island, so balancing what to build is somewhat important.
On the social front, basic leaderboards and gifting are both present, and visiting friends is rather useful as well. Players are given the opportunity to aid each others’ societies, and themselves, by using up to five god powers a day to activate some of the various decorations (e.g. torches and food bushes / baskets) to earn bonus experience, food, and so on.
As for our complaints, they’re not very significant, the primary one being that the game tends to be a little bit spammy when it comes to asking players to invite friends. Sometimes the prompt will appear occasionally; other times, every 60 seconds or so, which seems like too much. The first impression that the game gives off is also that it’s simply a Facebook rendition of ngmoco’s GodFinger, which sells the overall concept short; the morality concept doesn’t appear until later.
Overall, Island God is a very strong addition to the Digital Chocolate repertoire of games. With nearly 12 million monthly active users, Millionaire City has left some pretty big shoes to fill when it comes to successive games, but while other recent releases are mere copies of the popular game, Island God feels like it could do just as well without reusing the same concepts.
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