Godly Games



Godlygames.com appears to have appeared online in June 2000 (archive.org). The site does not seem to have changed much at all over its ten years of existence. Of course new games have appeared and disappeared, but the structure of the website has remained greatly the same. The site is curated by an individual named Dan Sharpe. There seems to be very little information about Sharpe except for the information that he provides to the viewer for himself. It is known that Sharpe has connections with TBN, the Trinity Broadcasting Network. This television station airs Christian programming all day. Furthermore, the end credits of some of his games ask the gamer to contribute $7.00 to ministries affiliated with this Network.

Besides the games, the site also contains poems, bible studies, and links to other Christian sites. This game suite currently features games for Windows and DOS platforms. One of the games inside are “Christian Matchups”. “Christian Matchups” is a remake of “Concentration” using biblical stories and concepts. There are several versions of “Christian Matchups”. There is also “Fiery Darts” 1 and 2, in which one fights the fiery darts of the Devil. The “Jonah” game presents scripture amid the traditional adventure of the biblical figure Jonah. A twist in this story is that the gamer’s objective is to catch Jonah as he falls from the boat, and to avoid the incident with the whale. “Every Good Gift” teaches scripture as one races to catch the gifts that rain down from Heaven. “Sword of the Spirit” is a game in which you use a sword to destroy objects that represent the slavery of sin. Finally, there are a series of maze games that allow you to ‘build’ the scriptures, bit by bit. All in all, Godlygames provides a nice array of games for varying ability levels that do Christian work.

All of the games featured on this game suite are centered around premises or anecdotes taken directly from the Bible. In this way, I believe it to be one of the “stronger” gamesuites that we have looked at. There are no games that ask the player to seek or save the “lost”, no depictions of the ambiguous “lost”, and everything that is stated may be corroborated by scripture. This is definitely a good pick as far as gamesuites go!

Citations

Wayback Machine. www.archive.org.