Populous™

From the genius of Peter Molyneux, before Powermonger or The Beginning, before it was Black & White or any Fable, before any Magic Carpet roamed the sky and when From Dust wasn't even dust, there was a single true God simulator. Populous was an earth shattering game, so full of innovation that the gameplay sounds quite alien even for today standards. You are able to use your powers to shape the whole world map, help your villagers or punish the infidels. And the idea of making the whole world a page of a book? That's pure art. I'd love to see a Populous compilation in the future, with this one, the second, and PowerMonger as well. And Populous: The Beginning as a stand alone release of course!

Populous was one of the first games to offer gameplay in which your actions do not directly control the characters; instead, what you do manipulates the environment and give behavioral commands to your people. You have powers you can use to alter the world, which takes mana. Mana is generated by your followers, so you try to grow the population as quickly as possible. Mainly you do this is by removing rocks, raising and lowering land so that your people can settle and multiply. Then, you may have additional powers to use to demolish the enemy: making crusaders, earthquakes, swamps, rocky mountains, or floods. There's enough to do here for a bit of strategic and a lot of tactical variety if you're willing to try different tactics. This shows what gaming was back in the 80s: with more than a dozen competing PC platforms, versions of games were produced for each. This is great, but it was particularly well-done on the Amiga/Atari computers. This is the DOS version, with inferior graphics and no real sound FX. Gone are the fanfares, clanging of swords, or any of the sound you may remember. Instead, this game sometimes has PC speaker bleeps. Had this game included the better sound, it would get a five rating. As it is, I'm playing it, but missing the better sound.

First thing is that you need to play the Amiga version, the DOS box version only has awful bleeps which kills the atmo. The Amiga version has the nice, calming music, the trademark heartbeat and swordsound. This alone gives the game the befitting Godgame atmosphere. I used WinUAE for emulation. You play as the God of the blue pixel people and need to make the land flat in order for them to be able to build a house and give you more followers. The more houses and followers you have the more mana you generate which you'll need to build and gift natural disasters to your (evil ofc) opponent. You can bring righteousness through earthquakes, swamps, vulcanoes and a flood to stop your opponent from getting stronger than you. When you gather your followers to get a strong leader you can convert him to a knight which brings down furious anger on your foes and burns their houses. There are 500 levels with grass, volcanoe, desert and snow surface which changes how fast your people reproduce and how long they can survive without shelter. Depending how much you scored you jump forward several levels and a sort of higher deity (what higher than me?) announces that you've done well and the code which you'll need instead of savegames. Up until 100 the game is easy, in later levels your opponent gets gradually more challenging. There is an expansion for DOS and Amiga called Populous: The Promised Lands with the following world designs: Lego Wild West French Revolution Bit Plains Silly Land I've played Populous 2 and 3 and they are ok but don't have the magic of the original Amiga Populous version.

This is the one game I've been waiting for more than anything else on GoG. Played it on an Atari ST when it was fairly new, and also acquired a (since lost) PC copy about 10 years ago and still greatly enjoyed it despite the low resolution. Now just hoping that Populous 2 and Populous: The Beginning aren't too far away.