Have you ever had the desire to play the role of a god? Control the weather, wildlife and decide the fate of your world's inhabitants? Ngmoco is offering Pocket God for your Windows Phone that puts you in the role of god over a prehistoric land and a tribe of pygmies.
Exercise your powers by controling all aspects of the resident pygmy's environment. You have multiple locations to choose from (island, graveyard, iceberg) and a handful of tools to either make the pygmy's life pleasant or disasterous.
The game has experienced popularity on other formats and to see how it shakes out on Windows Phone 7, ease on past the break.
The Set-up
Game play set up is simple. You have a retractable banner across the top of the screen that has various controls and a plus button to populate your world with pygmies. From there, everything is controlled by touch or tilt.
The first icon on you menu bar is your world's map. Your world consists of a tropical island, floating chunk of ice, a beach front point, a grave yard and an underwater getaway. Each point of interest on the map has side games to play (e.g. sending your pygmy into the volcano).
Other controls on your menu bar include toggling features specific to your location (e.g. giant spider in grave yard), toggle on/off a thunderstorm (complete with lightning strikes), toggle on/off universal features (e.g. shark in the water), toggle on/off pygmy dancing, settings menu, and on-board help.
Pocket God is a simple game and you really need to go through the Help Section to discover all the features this game has. While you can hit the ground running and get a good feel for the game, there will be side games and features you'll overlook. For example, repeatedly tapping the sky starts a fireworks show.
Game Play
Game play was simple and based on what you want to happen. You can have your pygmy tribe enjoy life or shake it up. The game's pace is however fast or slow you'd like to make it. If you only want to torture one pygmy at a time, it's your choice.
Everything is done by touch. You go from daylight to dark by touching and sliding the sun below the horizon. You pull the shark out of the water by touching his fin and sliding the man eater out of the water. What you do from there is up to you.
The game ran smoothly with no bugs, glitches or crashes experienced. There is Xbox integration to let you share your achievements on Xbox Live.
Pocket God does have objectives and achievements but the game isn't dependant on them. This takes away any pressure and allows you to freelance the direction the game takes.
Overall Impression
Pocket God is an entertaining, light hearted game for your Windows Phone. While some of the side games requires a little concentration, for the most part this is a very casual game.
There's so much to Pocket God that it's hard to single out one feature. Unleashing the T-Rex on your pigmy tribe is fun, just as is unleashing the Ice Monster. Then there's turning your pygmy into a vampire and then pull up the sun (not a good thing for the vamps).
Pocket God is a nice way to pass the time with and if you've got any reservations, there is a trial version available. The full version will run you $2.99 and you can find it here (opens your Zune desktop).
