I’ve been neglected to review Reus for a while now. It’s not that I don’t like the game, because I do. It’s just an easy title to forget about. It’s great for quick bursts of fun but it doesn’t stick with you very long. I’ve heard of gaming experiences being compared to ‘fast food’ before for their quick but ultimately unfulfilling experiences. Reus absolutely fits into that mold.
In Reus you order around four giants, one each for swamps, mountains, oceans and forests. You begin on a desolate planet (which somehow already has an atmosphere and is ready and waiting for life), picking one or more of your giants to lay down terrain to attract people. Once villages sprout up, they will shortly begin to work on a building project, such as a trading post that you can support by providing, via your giants, resources like herbs, minerals and animals that contribute either wealth, food or technology.
Filling your meager planet with people doesn’t take long so Reus quickly becomes a game of managing space versus needs. With only so many plots of land to fill with features and people you have to evolve the resource plots you’ve placed and take advantage of relationships between them. Provided too much, too fast makes towns cocky and they will sometimes attack their neighbors. At that point, I usually feel free to slaughter them with my giants attack abilities – no war on my watch.
The controls are dead simple as you lead your giants with your mouse and use either hotkeys or icons on the screen to deploy your abilities. Visually Reus is sharp looking with a clean aesthetic. The interface is extremely basic and looks like it was designed for mobile devices. The sound is extremely forgettable, filled mostly with the dull sounds of your giants shuffling about.
There are a lot of various goals to strive for and with the average game lasting about 30 minutes you can rapidly iterate various designs and strategies. Unfortunately, as I said at the start Reus is just doesn’t stick with me once I close the game. I’m also not drawn back to it once I’ve turned it off. Perhaps that’s the worst thing about the game – it’s fun but ultimately forgettable, and that’s a shame.
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Final Score: 6
