Populous (series)

The Populous series is a series of video games developed by Bullfrog Productions and published by Electronic Arts. The first game in the series – Populous was released in 1989. At the time, it was hailed as revolutionary, and it coined the term "god game".^[1]

Gameplay

The games involved the player taking on the role of a deity and leading followers into battle against opposing deities, and intervene by using a variety of "divine intervention" that affect the world and indirectly, the people.

The first two games were similar. In Populous and Populous II: Trials of the Olympian Gods, much emphasis was spent on flattening the terrain. The view of the game-world was isometric. Populous: The Beginning was more like a conventional war-game than a god-game and uses true 3D instead of isometric 3D. In Populous: The Beginning, the player is set in the role of a shaman instead of a god, but at the end of the game attains godhood.

History

The series includes:^[2]

• Populous (1989)
  • Populous: The Promised Lands (1989)
  • Populous: The Final Frontier (1989)
• Populous II: Trials of the Olympian Gods (1991)
  • Populous II: The Challenge Games (1992)
• Populous: The Beginning (1998)
  • Populous: The Beginning - Undiscovered Worlds (1999)
• Populous DS (2007)

From Dust released in 2011 by Ubisoft has been referred to as the "spiritual heir to Populous".^[3]

Trivia

In an interview, the series creator (Peter Molyneux), said that "Populous was like it was due to my incompetence as a games programmer ... the reason the feature (raise the land) was there was because I couldn't get the little people to navigate around the coast".^[4]

References

External links

• FreePop — an discontinued attempt to write a free remake of Populous