Please The Gods is the first game by Finnish game studio Surma Games. Inspired by myths and arctic nature they went for a different kind of RPG experience than we’ve grown accustomed to.
Sampo
In Please The Gods your family is on the brink of starvation. In a vision, you see the long lost (and broken) legendary treasure called Sampo. This golden mill could, once reforged, bring an end to all your problems and even grant you endless riches and nourishment. Just like in your vision you take the path toward the Land of the Gods to start “Please The Gods”. The pagan Gods Ahti, Tapio, and Nyyrikki send you on difficult trials before they even let you take a glimpse of the shattered elements of Sampo. With plenty of Mythological monsters and a harsh Nordic environment, it’ll take you much perseverance until you Please The Gods.
Choose your own adventure
Please the Gods is all played on a static map where icons appear on based on the current quest. These icons all represent places you can visit in order to reach your current objective. Taking a certain path lets you go through an encounter. Sometimes this means you’ll fight a monster, other times you can rest and regain health or even go look for food. Once a path is chosen, another opens up making this essential a throwback to those “choose your own adventure” books you might’ve enjoyed when you were a kid. Choosing one path over another can make a difference in the way things pan out for you. Choosing wisely based on your current health level and amount of food you gathered is key for eventually completing a quest successfully.
Dice game
When all diplomacy fails in Please The Gods, a combat situation will ensue. These are played out by the use of old-school dice combat rules. You and your enemy both start out with rolling 2 dice. After the initial roll, you can choose a skill to use to alter the outcome. These skills can add another die or just some extra bonuses. Powerful skills are often balanced out with a sort of penalty on your next turn making your choice have a lot of weight on the outcome. This risk/reward system works very well and makes for some tense moments when the battle is getting close.
Skill Tree
Like any good RPG, Please The Gods has a skill tree to advance your abilities. Each time you complete a quest you a granted one point to unlock a certain skill in your skill tree. These skills can be offensive or defensive. You can activate up to 4 skills per category to use in your next quest. In the beginning, you don’t have a lot of options but after a while, you’ll really have to think about what will suit the next quest the best. Experimenting with certain combinations can make a huge difference in your success.
Trial and error
Although the mechanics in this game work great and feel balanced, there were times I felt frustrated when playing Please The Gods. When you start a quest there are often a dozen encounters to go through before you reach the end goal. All these encounters could mean a good thing but also a bad thing. Preserving your health and food are key to your success but in the end, a string of bad dice rolls could mean your adventure stops abruptly. If you happen to be at the final encounter, this meant you had to start all over from the beginning of the quest making you go through the same encounters again. You can take some different paths to spice things up but many things are completely the same. This dreaded Trial and error aspect of the game was a bit of a letdown at some point.
Conclusion
Please The Gods is the first game from a bunch of students after they finished Oulu University of applied sciences. It’s pretty obvious that resources were limited to make this an epic epos like many RPG’s are these days. Nevertheless, Surma Games succeeded in making this a nice (low budget) adventure. I hope they can continue making fine content like this and I for one am looking forward to their next game.
