In today's video review Searc looks at Universim, a game that was recently voted #1 for the IndieDBs players choice, editor's choice and coolest game awards of 2015.
Universim, developed by CrytivoGames, is essentially a god game, like black and white, mixed with an RTS game such as Civilization.
You start with a single hut, or your epicenter, to create your civilization of little nuggets with the skills and intelligence of someone from the stone age. You begin with very simple skills, gathering food, wood and stone. The ability to build huts, farm, and oh, even make little baby nuggets.
Universim controls are very similar to the various other god/sim games with drag and drop features, the ability to designate job functions to your nuggets and rts function for gathering supplies for construction and repair needs. Beyond that, the planet is fairly automaton as the nuggets will perform their job functions as needed, make little nuggets, sleep, and eat all without direction from you to do so.
Your nuggets will also have the ability to learn through a series of tech trees that will unlock other skills, buildings, even self awareness, eventually allowing your little nugget civilization to flourish into modern society, all the while, having to worry about natural disasters, diseases, famine, and yes, even aliens.
The platform where you build your civilization is, quite literally, a full, spherical planet. Beautiful and lush with several different climate regions, which will take a role in the development of your nuggets, the planet seems to develop along with you, as you see wildlife live, die and flourish on their own, really bringing the whole world alive.
From a far the models of the wild life, your nuggets, and the buildings all look amazing with their bright colors that mirrors the planets colorful design. Upon zooming all the way in, the models are noticeably low poly with silly, bouncy animations, giving the whole game a cute, and family friendly feel that allows anyone to enjoy playing with their little nuggets.
Combine all this with a lovely ambiance with various sounds when interacting with your nuggets, to the sound of wildlife, weather, and other natural occurrences combined with a soft and fun soundtrack that plays in background creates a relaxing environment to play along with.
Currently, Universim is a very simple program, as it is in early early alpha, but is available to demo on steam for free, so there are some key features that are missing that you would otherwise expect, for example, the ability to maximize the game to fit your monitor, or adjust the sound volume and other aspects of a game we, as gamers, typically take advantage of.
But don't let that discourage you as Universim has a huge following with almost 16 thousand backers and raising over 560 thousand dollars on kickstarter to help continue funding the project, we are hoping to see full production come to a close sometime in 2016.
So this brings us to the ultimate question. Do you invest your time and money into this game? And I say the answer in this case is yes, whether you preordered the game, pledged on the kickstarter, or simply wait for the full release, the money will be well spent for anyone who enjoys a god game, a sim game, or an rts as Universim is all of the above.
And if you have never played one of these types of games, then this is definitely going to be the game that you want to try out.
And while you are at it check out also our Gameplay Video and don't forget to like and subscribe to the channel to get updates when we release new game reviews.
