You can say whatever you want about Christians and their faith, but one thing’s for certain: Christian art has always been taken very seriously by them. Gospel choirs sing their hearts out, to the point that even a non-religious person can appreciate their vocal talent. Churches are usually impressively built places to visit, even if you don’t particularly care for them. And even the half-dozen Christian games released over the last decades were, for the most part, things you could clearly see were created with some sort of care put into them. The Bible Game or Super 3D Noah’s Ark aren’t great, but hey, effort was put into their development. But what happens when you decide to take the easy, farcical, cynical way out when creating your piece of religious content? No, I’m not talking about becoming a televangelist. I’m talking about a brand new loathsome PC game, Jesus Simulator.

First thing I saw in this entire game: an AI-generated, three-handed Jesus.

Shoddy computer games with “Simulator” on their names are a dime a dozen, and usually created on the cheap, but very rarely have I paid too much attention to them. They’re usually a bunch of random assets thrown into a barely functioning game, meant to either appease to a stupendously niche demographic, or to just become a meme game sold for a buck or two. Jesus Simulator is more devious than these other games, as it’s clearly aiming at religious people, offering them a barely functioning piece of software for a price much higher than it deserves, all because it hits them right in the religious part of their hearts. It is a game that tells the story of Jesus in a very brief and summarized manner, but one made in a way that makes PlayStation Store Platinum Trophy traps look like Clair Obscur in comparison.

I know he’s the son of God, therefore divine, but I don’t think human hips and legs can stretch to such lengths…

The game starts off, and you’re greeted by an AI voice narrating some versicles from the Bible. Although they sounded so weird, in such poor English, it felt like it was a version of the Bible for 5th grade foreign students. The voice, in this case, sounded like as if Morgan Freeman was trying to do a Jeff Bridges impersonation. I’ll just leave it at that. Not to mention an AI-generated image on the back, with some of the people on said picture having six fingers on one hand. Well then, after such a phenomenal first impression, I was given control of… Mary. I had to get water from a nearby spring, and then cook dinner for Joseph. Because, according to the game (and, I guess, the scriptures), that’s what a woman should do.

I’m dead certain they used a premade asset of Viggo Mortensen in Jesus Simulator.

Second level. An AI image with hilarious narration, and then I play as Joseph, in an atrociously unresponsive QTE section where I’m told to build a chair. The next level, same intro, and then I’m in Bethlehem, at night, being barely able to look at things in front of me, looking for the fabled stable to spend the night. I was able to talk to some neighbors in the process. One of them had a French accent. I found that to be très chic. And after this level, I’d redo the same steps as before, but as one of the Three Wise Men. It would be only after this (painfully slow and boring) introductory session that I’d finally be able to play as Jesus… and oh boy, what have they done to him??

I don’t know if a member of the development team actually modeled this game’s Jesus, or if all they did was look for a model of a long-haired hippie in any random asset store and call it a day. If that was the case, I’m pretty sure they accidentally (or not) added a model of Viggo Mortensen into Jesus Simulator. At the very least, they had the decency of giving Jesus a tan, making him look more like an actual Levantine person, but still… I was looking at freaking Aragorn onscreen, and you won’t be able to convince me otherwise. Fittingly enough, considering his surfer dude looks in-game, Jesus’ AI voice featured an Australian accent. He turned “worrah into woyne” in one level.

Joseph, are you okay? Did they spike your wine with fentanyl?

You’d expect for the Jesus sections to be the most exciting part of this game, but the developers were able to make the act of performing miracles some of the most tedious gameplay experiences of my entire life. It doesn’t matter if I was turning water into wine, healing a leper, or reviving Lazarus from an actual lit pyre: all of these sections had me perform some atrocious QTE microgame before I was able to see the cheap Second Life-esque model I was helping get up from the floor. Even the “walking on water” bit, the one I was looking forward to the most, ended up being the single most disappointing bit in the entire game. Instead of letting me walk on water as Jesus or the disciple doubting him, nooooooo, I had to perform a timed QTE.

Why does Satan look like Palpatine in this game? On second thought… great design choice.

The funniest moment in Jesus Simulator was the bit where Satan was trying to lead me into temptation. Imagine an AI-voiced dude dressed in a Palpatine-styled cloak, just showing up from out of nowhere, like the kind of guy who’d easily be in a sex offender list, telling Jesus to jump off a building, or accept a gold candle. In order to fend off these sinful approaches, I had to repeatedly mash the Enter button until a “not tempted at all” bar was filled entirely. I think this was my favorite part in the entire game, just because it was so damn hilarious.

As for the rest of the game’s duration, which is just long enough for you to be unable to ask for a Steam refund, it’s just the same lame formula. Watch an AI voice narrate a passage, walk around a map with poor physics and controls, perform a QTE-based miracle, watch a cheap cutscene, repeat until you’re crucified. Oddly enough, the whole crucifixion ordeal wasn’t even twenty seconds long. In comparison, the Sermon on the Mount took nearly half an hour, and that was half an hour of line of AI-voiced dialogue after line of AI-voiced dialogue, non stop. The game didn’t even bother to add any gameplay-related section detailing Jesus’ resurection. I bet they’re going to add it as paid DLC further down the line.

Great song, but I think I prefer BYOB from them.

I wouldn’t have minded Jesus Simulator‘s existence if I was able to notice some kind of care and sincerity were used when crafting it. I simply cannot accept such a pathetic excuse for a game to be infested with AI-generated content, being just barely functional (how can you make pressing the Enter button feel so unresponsive?), and just being slightly longer than the Steam refund period limit so an innocent duped believer can’t even get their hard-earned money back after beating/enduring it. I thought that criticising this game would have been blasphemous, but there’s no other way to put it: Jesus Simulator is the kind of blasphemy that should have been condemned and persecuted by the Spanish Inquisition, outlawed just like the Da Vinci Code book.

Jesus Simulator is available now on PC.

Reviewed on Intel i7-12700H, 16GB RAM, RTX 3060 6GB.

A copy of Jesus Simulator was provided by the publisher.