Populous: The Beginning

Being a god means more than just handing out miracles, in Populous: The Beginning it literally means reshaping the very landscape beneath your people's feet. The third installment of Bullfrog's legendary series, released in 1998, took a bold step: it abandoned the bird's-eye view and moved the action into a fully 3D world of round planets that could be rotated and circled.

Unlike its predecessors, where you were an abstract divine force, here you control a shaman leading her tribe across a solar system of planets. The famous terrain shaping is still here, raising and lowering the land so your followers have somewhere to build and a way to advance, but directly controllable units, spells, and a tree of divine abilities from firestorms to volcanoes have been added. In terms of genre, the game shifted closer to real-time strategy without losing its iconic soul.

Each planet is a standalone puzzle: you must expand, master magic, and wipe out the enemy tribe before it does the same to you. Manipulating the landscape remains the heart of the experience and still feels unique today, few games give you the power to physically rebuild the world as a tool for victory.

Bullfrog was at that time one of the most imaginative studios of all, and Populous itself is considered the founder of the entire "god games" genre. This installment was its ambitious farewell to the era, a bold attempt to carry an aging concept into a three-dimensional future.

The PlayStation conversion let console players too taste the role of a deity, though strategy of this type always suited the mouse better. Even so it remains a fascinating and original title worth discovering.

Why play it: A bold 3D return of the founder of "god games," where you literally shape the planet beneath your people's feet, a unique experience from the Bullfrog workshop.