Populous Review, A Day in the Life of A Gaming God
Sure, today playing god in a game is nothing new. We have plenty of options if this is your one and only goal in your electronic entertainment. Back in the late 80’s and early 90’s though, options were much more limited. Populous took the idea of a sandbox game, mixed in plenty of “god like” elements and let loose on computers. Fans ate it up. Bullfrog and Electronic Arts, when they were not totally evil, did their best to port Populous to as many platforms as possible.
The idea behind Populous is rather ambiguous- it really depends on your interpretation of how God would act in this situation. The basis for the game is simple. Lead your people to annihilate the evil deity’s followers and take over the map. Now, how you accomplish this is up to you. Your followers will build houses, castles and the like only when there is prime land to do so. As they multiply they will migrate from their current housing and search out a proper place to build more. This continues until you feel confident enough to wipe out the enemy’s followers that reside on the other side of the map.
Your overall power is represented by the blue bar on the left side of the shield in the upper right corner of the screen.
Playing Populous is a little archaic compared to games of today in the real time strategy genre. Titles such as Age of Empires have taken the genre so much farther than anyone expected way back in the extreme late 1980’s when Populous was released.
As the god of the land, or “good deity” if you prefer, your job is to help your followers propagate and bring word of your greatness to everyone. All good so far, right?
Not so fast. On the other side of each map is a bad deity that would love nothing more than to end the life of each of your followers.
You are not defenseless here. Neither is your enemy.
For your followers to grow as a populace and to expose your greatness to more people they need flat land.
This is where you can come in and directly effect the lives of your followers.
Raising and lowering land can give your followers area to build huts, then stone houses, then eventually castles. The populace level of each structure changes with castles being the biggest.
When you are wanting to force your followers to expand onto the newly created land you can simply raise/lower a piece of land near a structure you want to force to create a new settler.
When the settler is created, he will go on a quest into the world and build a new structure on the first piece of land he can.
Normally a settler is created when the building reaches maximum capacity. By raising/lowering nearby land you can force your followers into a smaller structure and force a settler to be created.
This tactic works well at all periods of your quest to expand.
There is a reason you may want to let your followers create a settler of their own though. That is at the end of the level and you are preparing for the ultimate battle.
Whenever your followers encounter a follower of the bad deity they will begin combat. The stronger of the two will obviously win. This means, if you have been constantly forcing settlers to be created but your enemy has let them procreate on their own – you are going to lose a lot of followers in battle.
Battles are automatic and take place on the map that you work your deity magic on. You can call your people to gather around one area, such as an enemy encampment. This is an effective way to force battles to occur and get a feel for what is the eventual outcome of your time with Populous.
Along the top right side of the playfield is a bar that has some icons on it and an arrow that slowly progresses down and to the right.
This is your special abilities meter. Even raising and lowering land requires followers support – that is what this meter basically measures.
As that arrow progresses, you can unleash some wild stuff on your enemy. I mean, literally, drop the heavens on his evil ass level stuff.
Protip: raise land a few levels early on. It costs more but it is so worth it when your enemy can use flood on the map.
Flood literally raises the water level one unit. Any piece of land that is built right off the ocean is going to be under water.
The flood power effects everything on the map, not just your chose area like volcano or earthquake will.
If you have followers effected in the flood, then you must either raise land for them or watch them drown. The same goes for your enemy.
My favorite thing to do was to use flood a few times then invade my enemy as he was decimated. This was accomplished by having an immense number of followers available, so my special powers meter filled up quickly after using it.
The highest special power you have is to create a single knight from your followers. This knight takes on the knight of your enemy and the decisive battle for the map is decided.
I played Populous mostly on the Super Nintendo in all its slow-moving glory. I had a blast playing it though. Populous was so different in comparison to anything else on the Super Nintendo.
I still hold a soft spot for this game. Even today, there is nothing that really, truly, compares to what Bullfrog pulled off back in the late 1980s.
If you want to get your God activity on, then there is no better way to do it than Populous.
I forgot to mention that Populous was released today in 1989 on personal computers. Happy Birthday!
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