Publisher Devolver Digital and developer Deconstructeam have announced that their sci-fi adventure game Gods Will Be Watching has received a new “Mercy” update.
The new patch, which went live on Steam a few days ago, fixes several glitches with the game, but more importantly, adds several new difficulty levels for players to choose from.
Gods Will Be Watching has been regarded as being notoriously difficult. A point and click adventure game with minimalist graphics similar to Flashback and Out of This World, Gods puts players in the role of Sgt. Burden and his squad of interstellar freedom fighters as they participate in a number of dangerous situations amidst a galactic war.
The game consists of six different scenarios that involve a lot of tense decision making on the player’s part; for example, one scenario has the player and his squad holding hostages while trying to hack a government mainframe, with a squad of soldiers at their doorstep waiting to burst in and shoot everyone. The player must provide ample time for his team’s hacker to download the necessary files by fending off the soldiers outside while preventing the hostages from losing it and doing something foolish.
The game’s difficulty comes in the element of chance, which can unexpectedly wreck a player’s strategy through no fault of his or her own. On paper, the uncertainty of something like a hostage situation makes random factors a realistic element to have in Gods. Unfortunately, it can also make progress through the game almost impossible, as this gameplay video shows:
Recognizing this problem, Deconstructeam’s new patch for Gods includes three new difficulty levels: Puzzle mode, Puzzle Mode Light, and Narrative Mode, all of which remove random factors and the element of chance from the game in varying degrees. This allows for player strategy and tactics to be more effective, rather than being subservient to uncontrollable factors. Still, the developers seem quite loath to allowing players to un-hardcore the game, as evidenced by the accompanying image:
For more information on Gods Will Be Watching, check out our previous coverage.