Populous

What if you were a god? Not metaphorically, but literally, with the power to raise and level the landscape, to send down disasters and to lead your faithful against a rival deity. Populous is the game that first truly grasped this concept and thereby practically created the entire genre of the so-called god games. Out of a small settlement grow cities, out of cities grow armies, and you look down on it all from the heavens.

Populous was created in 1989 by Peter Molyneux with his studio Bullfrog and became its first great hit. The Atari ST version was among the original ones, alongside the Amiga, and launched a dizzying career, one of the first strategies where the player did not control units directly but shaped the conditions under which his people prospered. It was an entirely new way of thinking about strategy games.

The core of the gameplay is terraforming. You level the land so that your people can build houses and multiply, thereby gaining mana, divine energy. You then invest this into abilities ranging from earthquakes and floods through swamps to volcanoes and the apocalyptic Armageddon. The goal is to crush the rival's population on each of the many hundreds of levels. The game also offered play for two players connected by a cable, which at the time was a small miracle.

Populous sold in large numbers of copies and became an international phenomenon that kick-started an entire genre and inspired later titles from Black & White to endless variants of building and god strategies. Peter Molyneux became, thanks to it, one of the best-known game designers of his generation.

To this day Populous is a textbook example of innovation: a simple premise, deep mechanics and a concept no one had seen before. The Atari ST version was at the birth of this revolution, and for fans of the platform it is one of the absolutely key titles of the library.

Why play: For the birth of the god game genre and the feeling of true divine power over an entire world and its people.