Crest

About

Crest is a single player open world simulation game with fantasy and historical themes. It was developed by Eat Create Sleep and was released on March 8, 2018. It received mostly positive reviews from players.

"Crest" is a single-player, open world historical game with stunning visuals and an epic soundtrack, but be prepared for grinding and bugs. As a god, create and guide your followers through an evolving pictographic language and watch as their beliefs and interpretations shape their actions and the development of their religion. However, be aware that your commandments can have unintended consequences, leading to various reactions from your followers such as love, respect, or fear.

Genres & Tags

Play Modes

Single-Player

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64%

Audience ScoreBased on 322 reviews

gameplay13 positive mentions

story3 negative mentions

The game features a unique and innovative commandment system that allows players to influence their followers in unexpected ways.
The art style is highly stylized and visually appealing, creating an engaging atmosphere.
The game offers a humorous take on the god game genre, with followers often misinterpreting commandments in amusing ways.

The gameplay can feel repetitive and lacks depth, with limited objectives and a lack of meaningful progression.
The AI can be frustrating, as followers often ignore commands or misinterpret them, leading to unintended consequences.
The game suffers from performance issues, including lag and long save times, which can detract from the overall experience.

gameplay
75 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
17%
72%
11%
The gameplay of the game is characterized by its unique commandment-driven mechanics, allowing players to indirectly manage their followers through a simplistic sentence-building system. However, many users find the gameplay lacks depth and variety, leading to a repetitive experience as the game progresses. While the graphics and initial concept are praised, the overall execution leaves players feeling frustrated with the limited mechanics and overwhelming complexity of secondary systems that do not enhance the core gameplay.
- “The graphics are excellent, the gameplay is quite fun, and the music is good.”
- “Unique, commandment-driven gameplay.”
- “The gameplay is simple and straightforward, but as you dive deeper, it gets more complex with how you interact with your followers and what they are and aren't willing to do for you.”
- “Tons of gameplay components that didn't really affect the game in any way: the underworld I visited once and never again, the water maps could be ignored because the environment didn't seem to really matter, most of the skills tree can't even be unlocked, resource levels and city relationships just really don't matter to completing the objectives... it was a ton of tutorial for very little that actually came into play.”
- “The gameplay might be simple, but it's also simplistic, and feels antagonistically one-dimensional despite any attempt by the player to bring strategy, tactics, or immersion into it.”
- “Interacting with followers solely via issuing commandments is a really cool idea, but given that this is the central (and essentially only) gameplay mechanic, there's just not nearly enough variety in the kinds of commandments you can issue.”
graphics
67 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
37%
57%
6%
The graphics of the game have received mixed reviews, with many praising the unique and charming art style, described as minimalistic, stylized, and reminiscent of low-poly designs. However, some players have noted performance issues, including frame rate drops and optimization problems, which detract from the overall experience. While the aesthetics are generally appreciated, opinions vary on whether the graphics are sufficient to elevate the gameplay, with some finding them delightful and others considering them a drawback.
- “The graphics are excellent, the gameplay is quite fun, and the music is good.”
- “The character designs and graphics have a charmingly stylized chunkiness to them that is both comical and endearing.”
- “Crest has a polycraft-like art style that makes it look so pleasing to the eye, as if everything was carved out of a material, such perfect cuts to demonstrate that games can be good while looking beautiful all at once.”
- “This is a decent idea for a game, but it does not work when poorly executed. The developers decided to move on, and there is something completely killing the game in terms of frame rate, no matter what the graphics are set to.”
- “But no... when playing on graphics: simple & size: 1920x1080, it lags like crazy and for some reason my CPU temp gets extremely hot.”
- “I still don't recommend this game/sim; it's boring, bland, graphically impaired (even if this game was nice, the graphics wouldn't be important), goal-less, and extremely difficult to know what to do, plus almost nothing to help you out on how and what to do to progress in the game.”
music
20 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
50%
35%
15%
The music in the game has received widespread acclaim for its quality and fittingness, with many players noting its soothing and relaxing nature. The soundtrack is described as outstanding, diverse, and reminiscent of classic strategy game scores, effectively enhancing the overall gaming experience. Players appreciate that the music is memorable enough to linger in their minds even when not playing, contributing to the game's aesthetic appeal.
- “The soundtrack in Crest is absolutely outstanding, and feels as worldly as playing Age of Empires II felt the first time.”
- “It's honestly hard to describe how epic and inspiring the music here is; it's impressively fitting of the cultural subject matter and diverse in its instrumentations, bringing to mind some of the best old strategy game soundtracks.”
- “The music is soothing and relaxing, making it very enjoyable to play.”
- “A simple rule if in-game music is working for me is whether or not it pops into my head when I'm not playing.”
- “In this case, I definitely had these tunes stuck in my mind throughout the day, so I applaud the choice of soundtracks, which is thankfully also available as a DLC, and is recommended.”
- “The music and tone of the game is done well.”
humor
12 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The game's humor is characterized by its creative and often hilarious misinterpretations of player commands by followers, leading to amusing and unexpected outcomes. While some players find the humor engaging and entertaining, others feel it can become repetitive after a few hours. Overall, the comedic elements are a significant draw, providing both funny moments and a unique twist on gameplay.
- “A bit gimmicky, but very funny and creative.”
- “With that in mind, I think you might get a lot of enjoyment out of watching your insane little ant farm spread, adapt, and hilariously pervert and misinterpret your will.”
- “The gimmick here is that depending on how faithful each follower is, they are more or less likely to take your word literally, and this is paired with an internal system where they learn word associations based on their individual life experiences, all of which leads to humorous 'story' screens that show their misguided attempts to understand the world.”
story
11 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
18%
55%
27%
The game's story aspect is characterized by its directionless nature, where players are encouraged to create their own narratives through the interactions and experiences of their followers. While the game imposes early quests to unlock new words, which can lead to frustrating randomness, it ultimately allows for humorous and unique storytelling based on the followers' interpretations and actions. This approach may not appeal to everyone, but it offers a sandbox experience reminiscent of "Dwarf Fortress," where failure can lead to entertaining and unexpected outcomes.
- “The gimmick here is that depending on how faithful each follower is, they are more or less likely to take your word literally, and this is paired with an internal system where they learn word associations based on their individual life experiences, all of which leads to humorous 'story' screens that show their misguided attempts to understand the world.”
- “While the lack of goals may discourage some, I find that it sits in the Dwarf Fortress mentality of 'losing is fun'; it's a story generator in a way such as how your followers mixed up your commandments and took up cannibalism or decided to feed all the old people to lions.”
- “The big problem here is that for a game that claims to be a directionless god sim/story generator, it very much forces you to complete the 'quests' in the early game.”
- “There is no story, nothing to accomplish except to encourage people to spread and try to keep them from eating each other or turning against you.”
- “However, it's made to be ambiguous to produce a different story in every playthrough.”
grinding
11 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
9%
91%
Players find the grinding aspect of the game to be a mixed experience; while some appreciate the slow-paced, relaxing nature of managing their civilization, others criticize the tediousness of unlocking farming technology and the potential for unintended consequences, such as overhunting. The game's mechanics can lead to frustrating scenarios where players must balance resource management and ecosystem sustainability, making the grinding feel excessive at times. Overall, the experience can be both rewarding and frustrating, depending on how players engage with the game's systems.
- “It's relaxing, not tedious, and it's accessible as opposed to deep or complex.”
- “On the opposite side, the game is slow-paced even at 3 speed; followers tend to overhunt animals, and unlocking words is tedious.”
- “This is beyond tedious.”
- “The game's use of graphics and its interfacing system to allow you to manage your religion and its people is tedious at best.”
stability
10 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The game's stability has been a significant concern among users, with many reporting bugs, lag, and issues with game mechanics that hinder the overall experience. While some players acknowledge the developers' efforts to address these problems through updates, the presence of glitches remains a common frustration. Despite these issues, many still find the game enjoyable and express hope for future improvements.
- “It feels less like 'talk to your followers and have them interpret your commandments' and more like just trying to play a buggy city builder where sometimes the wrong thing happens.”
- “Game was buggy and laggy.”
- “It is still rather buggy - sometimes when you try to save and quit it will not let you actually save the game.”
optimization
9 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
33%
34%
33%
The game's optimization has received mixed reviews, with many players experiencing significant stuttering and performance issues, particularly on lower-end systems or with certain graphics settings. While recent patches have improved stability for some users, others still face challenges, especially with UI scaling on ultrawide monitors and high resource demands from AI. Overall, players recommend adjusting graphics settings and managing in-game elements to enhance performance.
- “With the latest patch released, I can finally play it on my Mac without any crashes and performance issues.”
- “The isometric style is enchanting in its simplicity, but to get the best performance, I'd recommend dropping the graphics down a notch.”
- “I'm sure the developer will optimize AI performance, but right now it seems to be a bit of a resource hog, so if your computer is not keeping up, lower the amount of animals and islands!”
- “With about 100 followers, the game is stuttering like hell and is no fun anymore.”
- “But while my laptop has no problem running vanilla Kerbal Space Program at full framerate, this game stutters and runs slowly.”
- “Maybe it's a platform thing, but whether it's the graphics or what the main loop is doing in the background, it seems horribly optimized for whatever it's doing.”
replayability
6 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
50%
50%
Overall, the game's replayability is criticized for lacking meaningful variety and depth, with procedural generation and tech trees feeling more like obstacles than enhancements. Players express that while there are attempts to create replay value, such as RNG elements and open-ended gameplay, these features often fail to provide a compelling reason to start anew. Consequently, many find the game offers limited actual replay value despite its potential.
- “While rapid replayability and changing environments are a great idea.”
- “It's a tricky puzzle; it's procedurally generated for replayability, but it feels like smashing your face into a brick wall and running out of options.”
- “The tech tree seems to force replayability by not letting you unlock all the techs, but I don't think the techs are interesting enough to justify starting a new game to see how they affect things.”
- “Could have been great with RNG elements that could have added replayability, and which could have made the commandments impactful.”
- “While occasionally this helps with replayability, more often than not it proves to be a hindrance.”
- “All of this amounts to a game that, though open-ended, has very little actual replay value.”
emotional
3 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
Players find the emotional aspect of the game to be deeply impactful, with moments like follower 34 expressing gratitude for a peaceful end resonating strongly. However, the lack of a clear overarching goal can lead to feelings of disengagement and disappointment, making the experience bittersweet. Overall, the emotional highs are contrasted by moments of frustration, highlighting the game's potential for connection alongside its shortcomings.
- “It was strangely touching to listen to follower 34 thank me that they were able to die of old age.”
- “These criticisms are made even more heartbreaking because the rest of the game is exceptionally well polished.”
- “I restarted my game several times, trying to find something to grab me, or do it 'right' this time, but each time I disengaged because I just didn't have an overarching goal I needed to hit, and therefore I hit my 'well what's the point' wall, and honestly, it's heart-breaking.”
atmosphere
3 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
Reviewers consistently praise the game's atmosphere and graphics, highlighting them as standout features that significantly enhance the overall experience.
- “The atmosphere and graphics are truly wonderful.”
- “The game's atmosphere immerses you completely, making every moment feel alive.”
- “The hauntingly beautiful soundtrack perfectly complements the stunning visuals, creating an unforgettable atmosphere.”
character development
1 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
Reviewers appreciate the character development for its charmingly stylized designs, which combine a comical and endearing aesthetic, enhancing the overall appeal of the characters.
- “The character designs and graphics have a charmingly stylized chunkiness to them that is both comical and endearing.”