Mims: The Beginning is shaping up to be something rather special.
A God-game with Indie origins, it challenges you to look after a colony of bizarre 3-eyed aliens as they attempt to make a home for themselves on a series of floating asteroids.
Gameplay evokes memories of Black & White, Populous, and even Maxis’ failed experiment, Spore. You need to create new buildings, which will help you to gather more resources; but your sphere of influence is determined by the placement of your structures. Create a new building, and the area in which you can issue orders or create new structures grows. You’ll need to keep a close eye on your resources to ensure that things are ticking along smoothly, but you also need to keep an eye on the mood of your denizens - an unhappy alien won’t be as effective a worker, so it’s your job to ensure that everyone is looked after.
For a game with such humble origins - Mims: The Beginning is the work of just 3 people - it’s utterly gorgeous. With some lovely visuals and audio work, it’s a game that’s already managing to put many bigger titles to shame. As with any crowd-funded game in active development, there are certain kinks to be worked out; the animations can sometimes feel a little floaty, while the English translation betrays the Polish origins of the developers. But all told, this is one Indie game that looks as though it could turn out to be something very special indeed.
Mims is nowhere near finished; there’s still a lot of work to be done adding in the campaign, the translation certainly needs a bit more work, and it has a few bugs. But it’s a pleasant reminder of how a God Game should play.
Evoking memories of the classics, while having enough ideas of its own, Mims: Beginning is a game to keep an eye on. It’s attractive, whimsical, and seems to strike a good balance between god-gaming tradition and having its own ideas. While Molyneux and 22 Cans could be said to be struggling to recapture the glory days, Squatting Penguins seems to be having no such difficulty in evoking the feelings that a good God-Game should.
If you’re a fan of the genre, you could do a lot worse than checking it out. It’s currently in open beta, so you can play it for yourself. We seriously suggest that you do so - it could be the best God Game that Peter Molyneux never made.
Dale Morgan
@spamdangled
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