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We've seen it happen plenty in Hollywood: two movies released at almost the same time about the same thing. Armageddon and Deep Impact in 1998, The Prestige and The Illusionist in 2006, Olympus Has Fallen and White House Down in 2013, just to name a few.
Games aren't immune to this trend either, I guess: a Jesus simulator called Jesus Simulator launched today, just a week before another Jesus simulator called I Am Jesus Christ launches next week on April 2. If you want to play a game where you're Jesus, you've been double-blessed just in time for Easter. Hallelujah!
I've already played I Am Jesus Christ, actually: it was announced in 2019 and I tried the prologue back in 2022, discovering some interesting things about the world's most famous carpenter, such as that he enters "Holy Spirit Mode" by pressing Tab and that he can shrink down like Ant-Man to battle microscopic viruses. There were also quite a bit more telekinesis and jumping puzzles than I remember in the bible—though to be fair, I've only ever skimmed it.
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As for Jesus Simulator, I only heard of this one for the first time today, and it's listed on Steam as "interactive fiction," which might not go over well with true believers. It's a visual novel in which you "experience the story through different biblical figures, including Mary, Joseph, Jesus, and His disciples, offering deeper insight through shifting viewpoints." No jumping puzzles here, I'm guessing.
Bad news if you're not a fan of this trend, but both of these Jesus simulations commit the mortal sin of using AI-generated content. Jesus Simulator's Steam disclosure says it uses "AI-generated images," which is pretty apparent if you even glance at the game's key art, in which Big J's hands look weird and one of those worshipful apostles is missing parts of his face.
I Am Jesus Christ also confesses to AI use, saying "AI tools were used in the production of the voice acting. We are a five-person team that has been working on this project for several years without the budget of a large studio. In our case, this was a practical solution that allowed us to complete the game at the level of quality we were aiming for."
If you like J.C. but aren't really into religion, there's actually yet a third new Jesus game out there: Jesus Take The Wheel, which is a co-op racing game that looks heavy on physics and light on gospel and launched the day before yesterday. Being a non-religious guy myself, that looks like it's more my speed.
The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.
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