Populous is an almost perfect mix of looks, charm and gameplay. It can be credited with starting a whole new genre (the ‘god’ game) and is indeed a true classic.

To put it another way, it fricken rocks!!!

In Populous you play a god, in fact you play a Good God. And of course if there’s a good God, it stands to reason that there’s gonna be a bad God kicking about the place somewhere. Anyway, you have followers, he has followers and you have to make sure that your guys come out on top. First of all you need a way to communicate your wishes to them, and throwing lightning bolts isn’t very concise so you need to appoint someone to speak for you, a high priest will fit the bill nicely. Right, now that you can talk to your followers you are gonna want them to do some of that “go forth and multiply” stuff.. but alas, the land is not flat enough to build upon.

But you’re a God, you can soon take care of that

So your people are settling across their newly flattened world, worshipping you and increasing your godly powers through ‘mana’ (more worshippers = more mana = more power). On the other side of the world Mr Bad God and his followers are doing the same thing, and sooner or later your two sides are going to meet and there’s gonna be trouble. So it’s upto you to get rid of him before he gets rid of you. Fortunately being a God means that you have some very nice weapons at your disposal: earthquakes, floods, volcanoes, you get the idea. You play the game across 500 worlds/levels starting at “genesis” and working through until you and your people have annihilated all opposition.

I haven’t really scratched the surface of the game yet, I havent talked about how you can transform your priest into a huge psycopathic knight who slaughters your enemies, or about the custom game mode. So I guess it’s up to you to download it and find out for yourself.

I promise you that you wont be disappointed. Populous is a wonderful game, good for a quick ten minute bash and long all night sessions.

Just do it

Related Links

• MobyGames: Populous
  Read all about it on MobyGames.
• Wikipedia: Populous
  Read all about it on Wikipedia.