So, a little more about this blog: I intend to write about how I would go about designing a game using only the genre or license (such as a TV show or movie) to start me off, explaining a little about the topic and then discussing how I think it would best work as a game. Hooray for having opinions on the internet!
Today's update is about the somewhat out-of-vogue genre of the God Sim. While structurally similar to the popular RTS genre, the God Sim also depends heavily on how effective you are (as the player) of looking after all your little followers while keeping such evils as monsters, rival religions and the ever-present threats of free will and an age of technological enlightenment off your doorstep.
While I respect the traditional genre set-up of sitting on a cloud and occasionally shooting lightning bolts up the asses of people you don't like, I'd appreciate more God games where you take a more direct approach of protecting your little underlings while simultaneously striking the fear of You into them. Ergo, more games that allow for Avatars. The concept of Avatars is simple enough: You can use some of your godly power (which, like most GS games, would come from your people's worshipping) to manifest yourself into a form that can roam the mortal world. You can either assume the role of an average adventurer and walk amongst your believers incognito (while helping out with their problems or fighting in their wars in a standard RPG Adventurer sense, while also spreading the good word of You, of course) or, and this would be even cooler, to manifest yourself as one of those giant statues like in Clash of the Titans. The latter form would be used to fight off Titans or Ettins (depending on if the game focuses on Greek mythology or Norse) who are equally colossal and potentially world-ending. While I haven't ironed out all the details about combat yet, I'm thinking you could repeatedly stomp on the neck of the metaphysical manifestation of the people's mistrust about poisonous vegetables whilst proclaiming something derogatory about its mother.
Either way, you could inject some (optional) actiony bits to an otherwise stale "directing genre". Of course, most folk who play these games like the directing part, so the Avatars would be made optional.
Notable games with avatars include: ActRaiser, where you manifest yourself to take out the most stubborn of evil lairs. Valkyrie Profile, where you assume the role of a Norse warrior angel (close enough) who constantly fights alongside your einherjar (uber-Viking warriors who died in battle that you have been ordained to collect). These two games are mostly platformer and RPG (respectively), though they do share some God Sim features in the downtime between action areas.
The second thing that needs more exposure in this genre is the concept of God Pantheons. With this, you could choose your own team of Gods, either from the ether like the Gods of Old or select them from particularly worthwhile mortals. With the former option, you have the particularly neat option of having the world around you be directly affected by who you choose to assume the roles of your under-Gods: Your potentials' personalities will effect how they would perform in their given Godhood. For instance, selecting a kind-hearted soul for the job of Nature God(dess) would yield a planet full of lush, rich environments suitable for farming and peaceful co-existance between all its peoples. Selecting a hateful asshole for the same job would result in a landscape that resembled a heavy metal album cover. However, selecting your second guy as the new God of War could ensure that your mortals will train themselves to become scary berserker types who would rip out spines first and ask questions later. Having a great library of these personalities to choose your Gods from could potentially create many different combinations and experiences for you to play through, maybe ramping up the difficulty by making the God of Life allergic to animal hair or giving the role of God of Magic to a complete klutz, who has inexplicably turned the people of the south continent into 30ft tall hideous demons while trying to solve their lumber shortage.
In conclusion, a really good Clash of the Titans game wouldn't be all too bad either. From a "Gods playing around with figurines of mortals" perspective as opposed to "kickass dude kills mythological things", because God of War already delivers on that front. And how.
