Please The Gods Reviews

What really got my interest towards this game was the unique setting and theme: Finnish mythology. It is super rare in video games, and I look forward to see it more in RPGs. But this game is really not a RPG. It is just a rough dice game with okay pixel visuals, dull sound effects and with zero tactics or statistics. There are some sort of skill tree system and attack/defense options in combat, but they really don’t tell me anything what they do or how do they affect the gameplay. In combat everything is based on dice rolls, luck and randomness which easily leads to unfair and tedious situations, like constantly taking damage from enemies and enemies constantly dodge all your attacks. There are no other options in combat, like retreat or escaping or such. Because of this unbalanced randomness I got stuck after the third boss so I could not finish the game at all. If you manage to win combat, you really have no options to restore your health. If there is no campfire in your way, you have no means to heal yourself. You cannot rest anytime, you cannot quaff healing potions or anything. It is very bad thing escpecially when you are forced to face the final boss having lots of health and luck. Besides, there is really nothing to motivate you to keep playing this game. No loot, no character creation, no interesting skills, no open-ended tactics, secrets or anything. It is really a shame. I really wanted to like this game for it’s setting, but can’t be helped. The game has so much wasted potential. Cannot really blame for a small indie team.

It's a nice setting and idea but execution is just not good enough. Game is too simple with not enough strategy, builds, event variety or story. It's not really much more than a dice rolling simulator tbh. If you like rolling a lot of dice, you could give it a try but if you don't, there isn't a good reason to play this. Overall score: 3/10

It's a little bit like blackjack with dice, except less aggravating and more strategy/interactivity. The game is extremely short, a lucky player can probably beat it in 2-3 hours and there's practically no replay value. I wish it had more animation and content to it, but none the less, I will recommend it based on the relatively low sale price.

This is great, short game. Very nice pixel artwork, loved Finnish mythology and story. Combat can be too rough if RNG isn't on your side and if you don't pick up useful skills while progressing in game, but i like that you need think what you're doing in this kind of games.

This game has peaceful, almost enchanted atmosphere which is created by the tranquil music and beautiful graphics. I like the themes, Finnish mythology and nature. It's so nice to gather berries and go fishing in between the fights. I enjoy this game.

After its kind ambushed you twice, you find yourself face-to-face with another starved Earthfolk, one of the many creatures inspired by Finnish folklore. Will you look past the prior encounters and give up some of your food? In the wild north, crops are dying and game is scarce. Your family struggles to survive. An artifact can supposedly help, but of course, its shards are scattered across the region. Accompanied by your trusty and unfortunately underused doggy companion you set out on a quest to secure your and your loved ones' future. After an excellent tutorial, you find yourself surrounded by deep forests, crystal-clear lakes, and vast plains. You move toward your goal waypoint after waypoint, often presented with a choice. Do you need a safe place for some foraging first, or can you do without for another day? Some encounters are straight-up combat, other times you can avoid fighting by saying the right thing or spending resources. Entire regions away some decisions might come back to haunt you later, and thankfully Please the Gods doesn't telegraph which ones. Beyond the short interactions, not much characterization occurs. Your personal life frames the story but stays out of focus. Recurring characters aren't developed much beyond being quest givers. That isn't to say the characters are badly written, unbelievable or even unlikable - Please the Gods merely is a short game and doesn't focus on character development. Food and health act as resources and are used up by travelling and getting injured in combat respectively. Managing both across your travels is an interesting and never tedious mechanic, but the randomness of for example foraging encounters might lead to frustration. Starving doesn't immediately kill you, however, and the generous checkpoint system never sets you back more than a couple of encounters. If you do find yourself in combat dice provide solid action resolution mechanics, in a nutshell: roll higher than your opponent to succeed. Skills are implemented as actions to be used each round and grant additional dice or modify and manipulate them. Most skills affect both the current and the following turn, e.g. providing a defensive buff now but reducing your offense next turn, and so the turns are ever intertwined, never quite offering a moment of respite. This leads to surprisingly fluid and entertaining combat, transitioning from defense to reckless attacks if a good enough roll comes along. The dice make combat swingy at times, but using six-sided dice makes it decided less swingy than for example D&D's favourite twenty-sided die. To enable sound decisions a good grasp on basic probabilities is recommended. Between quests, you can spend ability points to gain new skills from four skill trees. The skills seem well balanced but most don't seem that enticing. Some skill descriptions could be a bit clearer, but you have plenty of skill points and towards the end, there's even an opportunity to re-do them entirely. Please the Gods is entertaining, humorous and provides a good challenge. You despatch run-of-the-mill mooks increasingly easily; bosses pose serious threats especially if you go in low on health. The characters you encounter are quaint and whimsical. The artists had a fucking field day, especially with facial expressions. You are in for about four hours of delightful questing and interesting but shallow glimpses of Finnish folklore.

A game with Finnish mythology theme, there can be never enough of those. Very fun and simple to play, but keeps you on your toes. Gameplay consists of dicerolling and trying to manipulate the rolls in your favor by using different skills.

Simple game, roll the dice, make few choices every now and then. Huge thumbs up for using Finnish mythology! You don't see that very often in video games. Music is brilliant! It isn't game of the year, but I like to support smaller game studios like this one. Price is only about 2-3 pints of beer, so go on and try this game! Or even better, drink those pints while you play!

I wanted to like this game, and there are some promising concepts here, but ultimately it's all just too rough around the edges in all respects. It also commits the cardinal sin of making it so you can't skip the tutorial. No excuse for that in the year of lord 2019 no matter how indie a game is. The game is a dice game and as one might expect, luck plays a huge factor. There are skills one can collect with talent points that help tilt luck in your favor, but at the end of the day there's no fix for poor dice rolls. As such death should be expected unless you play on easy difficulty and get default +2 bonuses to your attack and defense rolls, and even then, don't expect to be impervious. Now death isn't always such a bad thing in video games. In rogue-likes for example? Death is a feature. However in a rogue-like, if you die, at least the next time you go through the dungeon it's been randomized a bit to keep that sense of "freshness" in your replay. There is no freshness in this game. Every playthrough is pretty much the same for all intents and purposes. Then again the game is like 10 bucks. There are three gods with which you must earn favor for in order to get them to relinquish a piece of a relic. These are always the same gods. Each of these gods are going to make you go on three quests for them in order to earn their favor. These are always the same quests. The map layouts for each of these nine quests are always the same, and lead to the same boss at the end. If nothing else, this is a game that could've stood to gain a lot out of a Slay the Spire style map with randomly generated nodes that wound their way up to the boss because if you die? Especially toward the end of a quest? Back to the end of the quest you go having to play through the exact same content again with no suspense and no surprises. Death becomes tedious quickly. Combat is, basically, you throw dice at your opponent and your opponent throws dice at you and whomever comes out with the bigger number wins. That's really it. The only nuance to be had is that your offense skills are used to smack your opponent in the face and net bonus defense dice for your defensive rolls. Your defense skills are used to be kind of crap and gimmicky, and if your opponent's dice happen to have rolled to fit that gimmick then you're great, and if not? Well then you get smacked in the face, naturally. As for the artistic merits of the game: 1. I like the setting. 2. I like the music. 3. I like the monster design. Ultimately, I have mixed feelings about the game. I feel there is potential here that just wasn't realized.

I like the theme, I like the music, I like the combat. However, I ultimately can't recommend it because whether you succeed or not ends up being determined by random map events. It gets really tedious to quit out and start a section over just because you happened to fail a roll for getting more food. Combat is balanced to the point where any debuff makes a big impact on your chances and the ability to heal is also largely random, since that only happens on certain event tiles. Adding partial successes to the food events, so that they're not all or nothing and being able to heal multiple hearts at campfires would make for a much more consistent experience, as it stands now random chance swings your chances too wildly.