Happened on this 1998 game by sheer chance and I’m really digging it! As far as I can tell it was never popular. It’s a mixture of an RTS and a “god game” where one unit (your shaman) is very powerful & special (chess analogy: sort of like mixing the central role of the king & with the power of the queen).
Strong “tribal” vibes that were popular in the '90s (think Deep Forest music, the game Riven, etc). Very nostalgic for me as I was a kid at the time. I’m playing the PSX version, looks like the PC version was even better!
Has anyone ever heard of this “Populous” series? I’m curious to try other titles, and to try more in the “god game” genre (a genre I never even knew existed!). Any other “god games” worth checking out?
More like 1988, not 98. It might be when the version you are playing came out, but Populous was from the late 80s.
Their post is specifically about Populous: The Beginning which came out in 1998 and was the first Populous game to use 3D graphics. It has quite different mechanics than the original Populous games, and you can see the DNA of Black & White emerging, with the concept of having a leader character that has an important role in the gameplay.
You are absolutely correct, but the article OP posted was for a specific Populous game, the 3rd one, which came out in 1998 lol. They just didn’t put “: The Beginning” in the title.
Edit: Also the first release was 89 not 88.
I played this. A great game. That era and Bullfrog in particular were incredible. Dungeon Keeper is one of the best games I played. Theme Hospital and Theme Park were great. It was the golden age of strategy games. Age of Empires 2, Heroes of Might and Magic 3. Red Alert games. Railroad Tycoon. I have no idea why this type of game became unpopular.
I strongly recommend Dungeon Keeper 1 (ideally gold with Deeper Dungeons add on) and Theme Hospital. Can get them on Gog.
There is an updated mod called keeperfx and it’s amazing
Theme Hospital is one of the greats of an era. (N.b. there’s a mod called CorsixTH which fixes a lot of issues with the original game (mostly age related clunkiness)
One of my favorite games of all time. Always been sad that the god game genre really petered out. There’s definitely a few modern examples but nothing thats really captured the feeling that pop3 had.
Definitely check out the black & white games, From Dust, WorldBox (which is more sandbox but still fun), RuinArch, and Reus(1 & 2)
Black and White was really fun for me as well for a time - it’s basically a god simulation combined with a zoo game as you have to grow your avatar basically.
Loved populous back then, if I recall correctly I even liked two more than one!
Black and white, and black and white 2 were so good!
I got it used for SNES when I was little but it didn’t come with instructions and I never figured it out
Same. But for me I rented it on Genesis. Had no fucking clue what was going on and didn’t really have a good time.
If someone is interested in playing this, you can get it for 2 bucks on GOG, it’s their mission to keep old games from getting lost media after all. I haven’t had much success with the scaling on linux through lutris though.
i somehow had both populous and black n white when i was a child too young figure out how to play.
Magic Carpet (1994) was a really interesting take on the genre, also by Bullfrog. Imagine the god-sim mechanics of Populous combined with a 3D flight-sim/shooter and you get Magic Carpet.