Surely 'Marines vs God' is the game name of the year

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:

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