Populous 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".

 

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.

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".

 

 

The series includes:

 

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)