Monday Memory: Populous

There wasn't anything like it. You weren't a soldier or a hero or an avatar, you were a god, an actual out-here-in-space making-miracles-with-my fingertips supreme being, creating fortune and disaster for the citizens of a small planet.

Populous put you in charge of a faith - the tiny citizens of your realm worshipped you - and they had compete faith in your random works of creation and destruction. You could flatten out the land so your people could build houses and procreate, and the more people that joined your cause the greater your powers would get.

At the height of power and in command of a large population you could summon floods and earthquakes to smite your enemies, demolish their cities with volcanoes, or submerge the land under their feet and drown them in the sea.

The people never gained much technology but they did have a couple of different unit types - soldiers and priests (who could convert the enemy into friendly units), so it had a very Old Testament feel to it. The only mode of transportation for these people was walking, and the gods were alive shaping the ground under their feet. But it was more of a Monty Python old testament than Charlton Heston, the graphics were somewhat comical and there was less violence than two colonies of ants fighting.

Each planet had a different scenario on it starting from the extremely simple to very hardcore, and after you conquer all the planets it would take you to a new solar system to conquer. If it were still playable on today's hardware it would be just as playable now as it was then, with the difficulty being somewhere around Lemmings - hard enough to challenge, too easy to be baffled for too long.

It was the first of the "god games" and in a lot of ways it was the best. It was fresh, it had an easy-to-understand icon-based interface, and plenty of puzzle packed into a few variables. If I still had a copy I'd probably play it every once in a while, it was fun.