Gods Will Fall
PC, PS4, Stadia, Switch, Xbox One
Combat is impressively muscular for a game that presents like a top-down dungeon crawler
Developer Clever Beans Publisher Deep Silver Format PC (tested), PS4, Switch, Stadia, Xbox One
Release Out now
The Greek gods have had a pretty strong run in videogames of late, even with Kratos leaving Olympus behind for the equally well-trodden fields of Asgard. Gods Will Fall, though, is interested in a pantheon that’s rather less familiar: Ogmios, the Morrigan and other figures of Celtic mythology. They might not be names you recognise – not least because developer Clever Beans has squeezed in a few of its own invention, to help fill the gaps left by history – but they’re ones you’ll come to fear.
Each god presides over their own realm, with thematically appropriate obstacles and enemies standing between you and them. For instance, harvest god Belenos is surrounded by burning fields of wheat, and protected by vassal troops who have taken the whole wicker-man concept and weaponised it. Fight your way to the centre, and you’re faced with the god himself, an enormous moth by way of Lucasfilm’s creature design department. This boss fight is your chance to dethrone Belenos permanently, but fail and you’ll find yourself back outside the door to his temple, down one of your eight warriors.
Because the Celtic pantheon’s aren’t the only names that matter. At the start of each playthrough, Gods Will Fall cobbles together a new band of Celts, with just enough variety in the randomly assigned details to sell the idea that they’re yours. Yes, it’s the old XCOM trick dipped in woad, but we’ll be damned if it isn’t still effective.
The star of our game is Floyd of Dinnage. His bare torso stained blue, clutching glowing twin maces hammered into shape in the Morrigan’s own divine forge, Floyd is a bona-fide godslayer. But this wasn’t always the case. Floyd’s story began in the dungeons of Ogmios, where he was felled while attempting to liberate an ally, before eventually getting saved himself.
This last bit is vital. Gods Will Fall may style itself as a Roguelike, but death here isn’t permanent – at least not until you’ve lost all eight warriors, at which point the gods will retake their thrones and you’ll be handed a fresh group of strangers. Until that happens, though, there’s always the chance of rescue. Think of it like an anthropomorphised stash of extra lives, or the push from a bonfire or bench to reclaim that huge deposit of Souls or Geo you can’t afford to lose. Except here, the reward for success isn’t some abstract currency, it’s the return of that friend who previously pulled you out of hell.
These are exactly the kinds of tales Gods Will Fall is keen to stoke, using every tool at its disposal. In text, it establishes relationships between characters – either pre-existing, as with a pair of siblings, or bonds that form due to your actions – and histories, such as a warrior terrified to face the god who stole her child. These are backed up with little visual flourishes (there’s this way Floyd has, after tearing down another god, of sliding out into the sunshine on his knees, like a child on a wedding dancefloor) and, yes, the occasional stat change. That grieving mother might take a hit to her health on entering the domain of her nemesis, but she later gains a boost as she finds her nerve.
The game plants these narrative posts, then leaves the player to weave their own threads between them. Or you can ignore this aspect, and just relish the thrill of the fight, letting the skills and stat boosts that are dished out after a battle tickle a different part of your brain, the bit that enjoys seeing numbers go up. (Or, occasionally, down. As we grow a little too reliant on Floyd, he develops a taste for godflesh that ravishes his health bar. Continuing to indulge this hunger breaks his body, rendering him essentially useless. He rallies, eventually, just in time to bring those maces to bear on the skull of the final god.)
The builds that emerge from these randomly assigned buffs are clear and characterful. Let’s shift the spotlight away from Floyd, towards Erin of the Drumoak. Wielding a slow but heavy-hitting warhammer, Erin gains skills which enable dodges to knock down enemies and widen her parry window, pushing towards an evasive playstyle. Meanwhile, with the long reach of her spear and a skill that boosts the strength of thrown weapons, Keely of New Swale has never parried in her life.
It’d be a waste never to engage with these systems – combat is impressively muscular for a game that presents like a top-down dungeon crawler, with cancels and interrupts creating a sense of momentum – but thankfully, that’s not really an option. You could lose a favourite character at any moment, a risk that necessitates constant switching of playstyles. Faced with a new god and their realm, we send lesser warriors in first, canaries down the coalmine, only resorting to our favourite godkiller once we’re familiar with every twist and turn.
Those turns don’t change too much, in truth. The dungeons are all handcrafted levels, with only the placement and number of enemies changing between playthroughs. Instead of procedurally generating levels, Gods Will Fall differentiates each new run by switching the difficulty of its gods. In a previous game, the sea god Boadannu might have given you no trouble. After falling to one of their kin, perhaps you rush back across the overworld to their domain to secure an early win – gods can be tackled in any order – only to find their minions have been hitting the weights since your previous run.
It makes for an unusual take on the Roguelike, if it can even be called that. A successful run takes around eight hours, and with no Hades-style meta-progression, it’s possible to manage it on your first go. Rather, shifting difficulty is just another tool Gods Will Fall uses to give a sense of ownership over your experience. Looked at this way, it makes sense that the game seems uninterested in drawing you back for a second attempt. Your story has been told, after all, and there’s no replacing Floyd of Dinnage. Or whoever your hero is.