The Universim is not a new game by any means. The original early-access game was released in 2018, with the full 1.0 released on January 22, 2024. For this review, I should note that while this game has always interested me, I have not played the early access and cannot comment on its prerelease state.
With that out of the way, what an interesting game! It’s not often I get to review a game that has no comparables I can easily relate it to. If I had to pick something, I would say Populous, a 1983 classic that I played the sequel to many years after its release. If you haven’t played it (and chances are you haven’t, but you should if you like retro games. Go with Populous II, though!), you play a God ruling over a small chunk of land with patrons you have very little control over, but you have to protect none-the-less. You influence them by using your grand powers to protect or harm them.
All of these things apply in The Universim, but the scale is massive by comparison. It is full of procedurally generated planets full of beautifully woven flora and fauna that actually make sense together. Your ability to directly influence your followers is still limited to influence, societal and godly alike, but throw in an enormous research tree and you have much more directorial influence on your worlds than just some cosmic voyeur and a greater vested interest.
Â
If you are looking for Age of Empires 5, this, it is not. While The Universim is most definitely a real-time strategy game at its core, the pace and intensity are at opposite ends of the spectrum. If you find the idea of Stardew Valley meets Civilization an interesting hybrid, this might be your jam. The pace is extremely slow for an RTS, but that might be exactly what you are looking for.
If slow and relaxed is what you seek, The Universim allows you to literally start with the first two intelligent beings (called Nuggets, for better or worse in this universe) and help them grow into an interstellar civilization. Where I think they may lose some audience is the inability to really affect this pace. It does allow for three speed settings but the fastest speed is not much faster than the natural speed. For a relaxed simulation of the ages, it is perfect.
You are the god that rules over the Nuggets, which you can do as a benevolent protector or a cruel tyrant. For my playthrough, I chose the former so I can’t attest to how the game plays through on the evil path. The narrator (more on him later) refers to you as “Creator,” which is really not the most accurate moniker as you don’t so much create the world or the civilization itself as you guide them through it, but you do get some cool omnipotent powers to help along the way.
Initially, you are in direct control of every citizen’s destiny. The various buildings and technologies you unlock from the enormous tech tree need to be manned by operators or specialists and you will assign these roles. A really interesting aspect is that as you unlock the ideas of government and bureaucracy, you automate these choices away as your Nuggets learn to govern themselves.
Along the way, you do get to influence your subjects in practical ways by choosing what technologies to research in which order and what buildings to construct and where, but you also earn your own god currency, similar to mana, that you can spend on abilities like telekinesis, healing and even manipulating the seasons. Â
The first and biggest problem I have with The Universim is a personal gripe but I’m sure I won’t be the only one who feels it: The Narrator. Don’t get me wrong, he has a pleasant tone and is a great voice actor, but whoever wrote his lines has a humour dryer than Monty Python but without any of the funny. He quickly became my bane. Luckily, as you get past the introductory years, he becomes less of a mouthpiece and more of a casual commentator.
Besides he-who-has-no-name, the only other issue I had was that certain aspects of the game are not explained very well. This is not even that big of an issue initially and it is even kind of freeing at first. You enter the world as if you were a god who just woke up and found out you were a god, and the lack of instruction lends to this feeling of exploration.
Still, there are many points where you are tasked with a mission (these missions are the method by which the game keeps you more engaged with your Nuggets once they become autonomous) and I found myself having to externally search for an answer on the web. This is expected in games with huge learning curves like Rimworld, but in a casual sim like The Universim, I feel most of these could have been answered with a small Universimpedia or index.
The Universim fills a gaming void that I didn’t even know we were missing: The Cute and Casual RTS. I enjoyed it for its distinct take on the genre and as a huge fan of the Civilization franchise and Simcity, I found it an interesting blend of the two. Yet this classification may have caused me to miss a certain element of the game that I only realized in retrospect. In my next playthrough, I am going to try and look at it through the lense of an enormous ant farm. I think this is where The Universim shines the most: as a charming and beautiful universe sim that is meant to be observed and casually influenced rather than directly managed.
