Pandora's Toybox Review

The commandment 'Thou shalt not have any other gods but me' goes to extremes in the new god-sim game, which takes its inspiration from WorldBox and RimWorld. Pandora’s Toybox, developed by BetaLab and published by 2P Games, combines strategy with god simulator gameplay, tasking the player with converting people to the Greek pantheon across several ancient and contemporary religions.

Structured by the pantheon and progression of their related culture’s history, you help build civilisations with a tech tree alongside each city you have religious dominion over. The assigned gods will also gain skill points for each stage of faith you collect, opening upgrades to their abilities. When a population is secured in their devotion, they will ask for miracles to be performed, which will grant artefacts with unique buffs — all ranging from common to legendary status.

The main goal of the game is to increase and preserve your religion and followers against opposing faiths, employing up to three gods or goddesses with their own specialised buffs and curses to aid your defence. Per the mission, called planes, you have to accumulate more faith points by doing blessings, using your god powers to convert people, and demolishing heretics and their shrines faster than the heretical gods can, the speed of which determines how many stars (up to three) you receive upon completion. Achieving success in your first try grants crystals used to upgrade unlocked skills, equip them for the next stage, and reap the rewards.

There are many things to like about Pandora’s Toybox: the character designs are quite nice to look at with their youthful and colourful art styles; you can individually follow the family tree of a follower to see how they have grown from the start of the game, and the variety of religions on offer to compete with aren’t just from Europe and the Mediterranean (if you’re interested in that sort of stuff).

The soundtrack adds to the wondrous charm of the game’s aesthetics, starting with the cosmic melody of the menu screen of the planes, introducing new and continuing players to the world of Pandora’s Toybox. When playing missions, the music and sound effects are high quality, balancing the frantic sounds of natural disasters with the quieter population management gameplay.

Outside of the gameplay loop, Pandora’s Toybox slowly introduces new gameplay techniques to achieve success, whether building a new civilisation or weakening another to easily convert the survivors. After a few missions, you will be able to repeat the same tricks and tactics without any issues. Though, as you unlock more gods to fight against as you play the game, it will warn you of their high difficulty, which feels like slapping the player’s hand for wanting to sample everything rather than systematically going down the same path. This mechanic leads to one of the bigger issues.

You’re playing as gods and goddesses from the Greek mythos. Full stop. Any gods you come across in the game are for show, even when they have buffs. And I know the game is still getting updates (to note, at the time of writing, there has been an update that unlocks “Heretical Mode” after completing the Norse mythology progression), so hopefully this (selection of playable gods/goddesses) might be implemented after a while. Another issue is the repetitive restarting of civilisations from the beginning stage every time. You do receive a skill that allows you to bring over a few settlers per three-star mission you’ve done, but it doesn’t aid the first 15 minutes of waiting to begin building structures.

There’s still a lot that needs to be done, and I’m sure the developer can achieve beyond my expectations of what I believe is a worthwhile new game on Steam at this moment. Overall, Pandora’s Toybox succeeds at making you feel like a god, but only an Olympian.