How to play God: My World

1. How the world runs

The table holds grassland, forest, mountains, desert, a river, the sea and a great island. A new world begins with three small peoples and the Windriders, nomads who ride between three camp grounds; four more sites wait for settlers. Deer, goats, bison, elephants, camels and desert foxes roam in herds, hunted by lions and wolves.

You never move anyone by hand. A people farms, hunts and builds on its own, grows while its land feeds it, pushes its border out when crowded, and goes to war when hungry or hemmed in.

One day of the world is a year: dawn is spring, midday summer, evening autumn and the short night winter. At 1x a year takes three minutes. The speed buttons under the powers are Pause, 1x and 5x. Everything that counts down, from a prayer to a warning, counts in the world's time. The world saves itself every few seconds, and while the game is closed it waits as you left it.

2. Faith, prayers and goals

Powers cost faith, shown at the top of the power panel. You start with 60 and can hold 100. Faith returns with the world's time: a little under one point a second at 1x, and up to two while every people is fed, at peace and free of plague. It also comes from:

• Prayers. Every minute or two a people prays for rain, a blessing or seed for the forest, under a notice titled A PRAYER whose button, such as Choose Rain, picks the power. Release it on their land within 100 seconds of world time to gain 20 faith. Rain that was prayed for also ends a plague.
• Goals. The GOALS panel lists 28, each worth 20 faith once, from six First Steps that teach the game to 50 years of peace. Rest the pointer on a goal to see how it is reached; the History tab beside it records everything that has happened.
• Great events. Every few years each people meets good or ill fortune, from gold and great harvests to bandits and locusts. A prophet brings 25 faith; heretics take 15 away.

The card on the world panel says what to do next: the next First Step, then who is praying. Click a prayer there to see the place.

3. The powers

Choose a power on the power panel, then release it on the land. HELP powers feed and teach; HARM powers destroy. A tile is dimmed while you cannot afford it. Two buttons cost nothing: Look closer shows how a people, a person or an animal fares, and Territories shows every people's land and every herd's range.

A release that cannot happen, for want of faith or of a herd near enough, costs nothing, and the game says why.

4. The ages

Each people climbs on its own: Small Group, Camp and Tribe (Stone Age), Village (Bronze Age), Town (Iron Age), Walled City (Middle Ages), Factory City (Industrial Age) and Metropolis (Modern Age). A metropolis then builds an airport, and later a launch pad: the Space Age, with a rocket going up about once a minute.

Each step needs enough people, materials and knowledge at once, and none is taken during a war. Select a town with Look closer and the world panel shows all three under Next age.

• People come from food grown on the land inside the border.
• Materials come from work, and more of them while the forest round the town stands healthy.
• Knowledge grows with the number of workers, counting up to forty of them. Trade adds a quarter and a blessing a half; war or plague cuts it to under a third, and famine to a fifth.

A people behind the furthest age yet reached learns half again as fast and needs seven tenths of the knowledge for that age. A banner, A BREAKTHROUGH FOR HUMANKIND, with fireworks over the town, marks the world's first entry into each age, its first rocket, and every people's airport and launch pad.

What else happens

• Colonies. A people of 50 or more, from the Bronze Age on, sends ten settlers to an empty site.
• Nomads. The Windriders fight hard but learn slowly. Every two years they may move camp, and in the Iron Age they settle for good and build a town.
• War. A hungry or crowded people attacks a neighbour, shown by a red arrow. The winner takes land, or the whole city if it is much stronger. Neighbours who trade for three years become allies.
• Vanishing. A people or a herd down to its last few gets a notice, ABOUT TO VANISH, counting down 90 seconds of world time. Bless a people or send it rain; carry a herd to open land or bless its land. Help in time brings more of their kind. The last people in the world never vanishes.

5. New, shaped, saved and shared worlds

Everything about worlds is under Settings, below the speed buttons.

• Generated, under NEW WORLD, begins a new world with land of its own when pressed twice within six seconds.
• Shape It opens the land editor instead. Paint with Mountain (from Hills to Peaks), River, Desert and Forest, or Wipe back to grass; a river that meets a mountain falls from it as a waterfall. Drag the flags (peoples), yurts (the nomads' camps) and animals (herds) where you want them; Add People, Add Herd and Wipe Life place and remove them. Anything that breaks a rule, such as a town too near water, blinks red, and Create World waits until nothing does.
• Saved Worlds has three slots with Save and Load; each asks for a second press before it replaces anything. Previous World keeps the world you left when you loaded another or began a new one.
• Share This World puts the whole world into a link, through the share sheet on a phone or the clipboard on a computer, but not from inside VR. Nothing is uploaded. Whoever opens the link can play your world; theirs moves to Previous World, and Play my own world instead takes them back.

Saves live in the browser on your device, so a private window may not keep them.

6. Playing together

Play Together, under Settings, lets friends join your world from a computer, a phone or a headset.

1. The host presses Host a Room and gets a four-digit code.
2. Friends type the code on the keypad and press Join, and their game reloads into the host's world. Everyone needs the same version of the game; reloading the page brings the newest.

• A room takes up to six guests. Each other player appears as a god in a robe of their own colour, floating where they aim.
• Only the host's world changes, at the host's speed. A guest's own world waits untouched until they press Leave Room.
• Guests come with 100 faith that does not come back. Under GUEST POWERS the host allows None, Good only (the HELP powers) or All, and can change it while the room is open.
• Mic opens and closes your microphone, which the browser asks for only then; Voices turns the others off and on. In VR the Quest's browser leaves VR to ask the first time: press Mic again, answer, then press Back to VR.

Voices and the game go peer to peer, straight between the players' devices, through no game server; public relays only introduce the devices to each other. Some strict networks cannot connect.

7. Controls

On a computer

• Right-drag turns round the table and the wheel zooms. Middle-drag, WASD or the arrow keys move the view, Q and E turn it, and R puts it back.
• Keys choose powers: 1 Look closer, 2 Blessing, 3 Rain, 4 Fire, 5 Lightning, 6 Quake, 7 Tornado, 8 Meteor, 9 Plague, 0 Drought, Z Wipe, X Sow, C Carry, V Revive, B Science. Click the land to release; for Fire and Wipe, hold the button and drag.
• Space pauses, [ and ] change the speed and M mutes. Hold the button still on the land for a magnifier.

On a phone

• Held upright, the panels fold into three buttons: the world and the goals at the top, the powers at the bottom right. Tap one to open it and its header to fold it; on its side, all three stay open.
• One finger turns round the table and a pinch zooms. Drag two fingers to move, twist them to turn, or swipe them up or down together to tilt. Tap a power, then the land; hold a finger still for the magnifier.

In VR on Meta Quest

Press Enter VR in the Meta Quest Browser, or, on a computer or phone, Launch on your Meta Quest device on the game's start card. Walk round the table; the left thumbstick glides you along and the right one turns you. Point at a tile and pull the trigger to choose a power. Then your left hand points at the place and your right hand makes the gesture, which a guide on your left shows until you have released that power once. With hand tracking, a pinch is the trigger.

• Blessing: hold the trigger and lower the hand slowly. Revive: hold it and raise the hand slowly.
• Rain: pinch, pull back like a slingshot and let go. Meteor: hold, swing the arm and let go mid-throw.
• Fire: hold the trigger to spray flame. Drought: hold it with the hand above your head.
• Lightning: swing the hand down fast. Quake: bring the fist down hard.
• Tornado: hold and draw a full circle. Plague: hold and shake the hand from side to side.
• Sow: hold and toss the hand upward. Wipe: sweep the hand from side to side, or low over the land itself.
• Carry: hold to lift the herd you point at, point elsewhere and let go. Science: pull the trigger twice, quickly.

To release by pointing instead, press Release: Hand Gestures under Settings.

In AR

On a Quest that can show your room, Enter AR stands beside Enter VR. The world, table and all, then stands in your own room, to walk round on your real floor.

8. Tips that follow from the rules

1. Spend faith before it reaches 100. Nothing is added past 100, not even the 20 from a prayer or a goal.
2. Answer every prayer you can. Rain costs 10 and a blessing 25; each answer pays 20.
3. Pause when a warning comes. The count stops with the world, but powers still land. At 5x a prayer lasts only 20 real seconds and a warning 18.
4. Keep the forest near towns. A town's food and materials depend on the trees standing round it, and trees you have sown, rained on or blessed count for more.
5. Feed peoples to keep the peace. Wars begin with hunger or a lack of room, and rain and blessings both add to a people's food.
6. Help the people at the back. Below the Industrial Age, Science always brings the next age within reach. It gives knowledge and materials, not people, so check Next age first.
7. Give the herds a refuge. A blessing on wild land far from any town makes a sacred grove that no people can take.