Early last week, Molyneux told Joystiq that a playable prototype for the game would hopefully be ready for public consumption by Christmas. Later last week, the team released a video including some footage of the still-buggy prototype in action.

As of this writing, Project Godus has raised more than £273,000 ($440,485) of its £450,000 ($726,075) funding goal, with a little more than a week to go until the deadline. Molyneux said the stress of trying to meet that goal, and living up to his promises to revolutionize the god game genre, have lately had him “sitting in a corner shaking slightly with fear and trepidation.” Still, he’s hopeful that having a playable prototype will get the team over the last hump.

“We’re hoping that in the last eight days, some people will pledge some money, and we’re constantly looking, asking ourselves what we need to do to persuade people to spend money in what is an insanely difficult time of year for people,” Molyneux said. “Just before the holiday, ‘do I pledge to Godus or do I buy a present for my children’ is a tough decision to make, I think.”

Ars will have much more from our chat with Molyneux in the coming days.