Despite a recently released statement about how they had surpassed their revenue targets, Activision Publishing have laid off around 5% of their workforce this week, saying that they are aiming to “realign resources” to “support [their] upcoming slate”. Reports indicate that the staff in question were employed in Beenox, Activision’s corporate office, Infinity Ward and others. Blizzard were unaffected by the layoffs however.

In a statement Activision said “Activision Publishing [are] realigning our resources to support our upcoming slate and adapt to the accelerating transition to digital, including opportunities for digital add-on content.”

So money is being freed up for new games, and it seems a focus on DLC and other digital content. This came to light during Activision’s Q4 2016 call, in which the CEO of Activision Eric Hirshberg said that the sales of Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare had been “disappointing” – but really we knew that already.

The call did reveal one other interesting fact though; Activision only has two games planned for this year seemingly – Destiny 2 and a new Call of Duty that will return to its roots and leave behind the futuristic stuff for something more historical. This does seem to suggest that their mention in the statement about digital add-on content may become the company’s focus at least for this year. Beyond that, we’ll have to see how things pan out.

An awful lot of the games I’ve reviewed so far are simple little indies, and a number of those were ports of small mobiles games or at least had the feel of one. When I say that, you get a picture of the sort of thing I’m talking about but sometimes you get a game like that, but different. This is one of those.

Forge of Gods is a free-to-play RPG game on Steam, in which you progress step by step through levels against opponents, picking up dropped loot and most importantly collecting souls of defeated monsters to capture and then add to your army. A big part of this is the ability to merge together or evolve souls of two of the same creature to make a stronger new creature, as well as the ability to use ‘crypts’ to summon new creatures. The levels do have a story behind them, and as you go along and clear out creatures you will level up your party and be able to take on stronger enemies.

Another thing this game has is placement strategy – some creatures are melee, others use ranged attacks and others provide support abilities such as buffs or heals. Good placement of your army maximises the efficiency they have as you progress; if you finish a level with some of your army defeated they will still get the experience for the level but there are bonuses for finishing levels without casualties and more attackers on your side just makes it easier to progress. There are also other quests and tasks you can aim to complete, which will reward you with experience, meat to allow you to do levels and sometimes the green gem currency that you can spend on things like summoning in certain crypts or to open rare chests that have a chance to summon a rare soul.

Crypts come in different expense and rarity levels, the more expensive crypts obviously having a greater ability to summon rarer monsters for your needs. You can access the Stone Crypt with soulstones you receive for completing levels or quests though, with chances to gain common and uncommon creatures which can sometimes be useful for other purposes. You can also choose to ‘feed’ spare souls to your more powerful beasts to give them an experience boost – with there being a bonus boost if you ‘feed’ a soul of the same type as the one you’re trying to level (human souls to a human creature for example).

The game does have microtransactions in there, with amounts of currencies being available for set prices. However, this game is perfectly fun without having to spend anything and has an awful lot of content and challenge for a free-to-play and that was not expected – a pleasant surprise in fact! You have the ability to go back to replay levels at a harder difficulty, and you will find yourself going back to level your army a few times but not enough for it to feel like a grindfest. I could play this game an awful lot and feel like I’m doing a good job and making progress no matter how small that progress might be, and that’s a real positive.

I recommend this game if you want a nice simple little creature catching, fighting RPG. It’s free-to-play (with microtransactions and some downloadable content packs that do cost), so go give it a try. What have you really got to lose?

8/10

Check out the video review of the game I did for more: