Every so often you’re browsing Steam’s upcoming releases, and a game’s name makes you do one of those cartoon spit-takes. Say hello to Marines Vs God, in development from no less than the Marines Vs God Team. It is an eight-person PvP game where seven players bellow “ooh-ra” and rush forwards with third-person guns a-blazing, while the other controls a giant disembodied hand in a top-down view and does everything they can to screw over the tiny humanoid team.
“Put your soul at stake and experience the power of natural selection in an epic battle with God,” booms the Steam store description, making clear that this is not one for the creationists among us. Each mission sees the four marines dropped on a planet cursed with a bomb that eventually explodes and “leads to doom of the God”, which makes you wonder why the deity’s hindering rather than helping things, then have to complete objectives as the God player casts spells.
These are chosen from a deckbuilding-style list of 100 Godly abilities, and there are some rather poetic and vague descriptions of what to expect:
- Anthem of extinction to damage all units
- Unleash psi storm destruction
- Use illusion of deceit
- Depth power to call creature of the night in broad daylight
- Summon reactive poisonous dragon
- Spawn fake supplies to trick marines
- Lethal horror effect
- Spawn society breaker boss
- Evolve into a new clandestine life form
- Drop atomic bomb
Just nuking the marines seems like it would do the job, and yes you’re maybe wondering why the big man doesn’t just snap his Holy fingers and blink them out of existence, but God works in mysterious ways. The God player chooses up to seven abilities per match and as well as this can choose their preferred God. Here’s where the wheels come off a little: Okay, Zeus is definitely a god. I’m not so sure about “Necromancer, Demonologist, Gin, King of Robots, Matriarch, Juggernaut”, nevermind the TikTok star Anar Dreams. If it all sounds a little familiar, particularly Zeus taking on a platoon of marines, that’s because Arma 3’s Zeus mode offered similar asymmetrical mayhem a decade ago, though in a much simmier sandbox.
In Marines Vs God the marines can also choose to betray the corps and work alongside their truculent deity. The game’s modes allow for one god against multiple marines, but also for one god and a marine to team up against a marine group (with several abilities designed to confuse the marine team that presumably sync well with this setup).
Marines Vs God is due out in 2025, with a playable demo featuring one map launching soon. This could go either way: the scope doesn’t seem outrageous, and the game was announced with a trailer showing plenty of in-game footage from both perspectives. The whole setup is appealing enough to me, but when you see a dinky ‘lil marine blasting away at some giant polygonal sky face, and then can watch the incoming fire from the latter perspective, this looks like it will be a good laugh at the very least. It also really seems to have it in for gods, exhorting players to make them “remember they were all once human too.” Again I’m not sure on the scripture here but, when god’s going down anyway, maybe it doesn’t matter anymore.
