Zeus demands a fresh shipment of novelty-sized lightning rods
Many fantasy games deal in the prospect of sacrificing things to gods, but few dramatise the associated exciting logistical pressures. Say you want to chuck a bunch of virgins into a volcano at regular intervals, to stop the regional Vulcan pulling a Pompei. Well, how are you going to procure an adequate supply of vestals, if you keep incinerating the very means of production?
Perhaps you can obtain some from the nearby villages, in return for some steel wire from your furnaces. Ah, but the nearby villages don't want any wire; they're desperate for fish. Fine: sell the steel wire to the villages on the coast, that they may haul in a big catch and sell it to the inlanders, so they can flog their spare virgins to you. What happens when the other villagers run out of virgins? That's their problem. As Valve like to say, we cannot be held responsible for the business decisions of third parties.
Thus my rudimentary overview for resource management strategy game Prophet Margin, from the developers of emoji planet-gobbling simulator To The Stars. It's a game about building intricate trade routes so that you can heap the altars of various gods with a particular commodity. Admittedly, I don't think there are any virgin sacrifices involved.
"The gods hunger for tribute!" bellows the Steam page, like Moses descending from Sinai but set to the Crash Bandicoot OST. "Each temple demands a single sacred resource associated with its god. Your job is to weave long, efficient trade routes that end with the right goods at the right shrines. Optimize your web of settlements to deliver the exact resources each god demands then watch divine gifts reshape your possibilities."
The devs calls it "a meditative city builder where board-game logic meets deep resource management" and "a relaxing, 'real-time with pause' strategy puzzle where every decision is yours to undo". They say you'll especially enjoy it if you've played Anno, The Settlers and Captain of Industry.
Going by the trailer, the god theming is arguably just set-dressing – it's just about linking up some inputs and outputs that could also be themed as, I don't know, organs in a digestive system, or the cursed sequence of evolutionary mishaps required to produce Nigel Farage. But I do like the notion of a city-builder where all your cities exist to please some lounging deity who really loves woollen clothes.
Every trade route you connect also levels up the associated settlement, while also changing the resources it requires to create an output, so the challenge alters, the more you develop your network. Unlike in Nova Roma, the gods don't appear to get mad and smite thee with thunderbolts, should you fail to gratify their passion of knitware. When's it out? "Soon", with a demo arriving even sooner.