Populus, what a great game it was, that Bullfrog released 1989. Bullfrog and their charismatic leader Peter Molyneux made this one of the first “godgames” of the time. It was pretty cool and quite a success on almost all current platforms (PC, Megadrive, SNES, PC Engine, Amiga …)
The graphics where pretty good at that time, so remember this ?
Hard to imagine i loved to play this .. but hey it was great.
It had some sequels so Populus 2 and 3 came after the big first hit.
Bullfrog made many other amazing games, like Syndicate, Magic Carpet, Dungeon Keeper and so many more ..
Im still waiting for a new Syndicate revival..
So Bullfrog vanished and Godgames are so,somewhat “out”, maybe after Molyneux’s own “Black and White” failure, nobody seemed to be interested anymore in this genre.
Until now it seems, because Ubisoft announced a new game, that follows the old foodsteps of Populus. But in a pretty new way, as you experience some amazing new behavior when building the world. Fluid simulation and pretty shader show a much more believable physical reaction when growing trees, moving sand or cutting a river into the landscape.
Water, Lava, Sand, Vegetation .. all seems simulated, to be more interactive and the term “Sandbox” fits perfectly..
Water and lava flows interactivly into cavities, sand piles naturally .. pretty cool i think.
Here the water flows slowly into the terrain, eating away sand and part of the shore.
Erosion can be stopped by using vegetation or stone …
That sounds like some fun for itself, i hope they made a nice game out of it.
Eric Chahi is responsible for the game and he knows about worlds. Back in the old days, Chahi was working for example at Delphine Software and was involved in games like “Another World” or “Heart of Darkness”.
The game is announced to be released spring 2011, so enough time to make a great game. So far the video and few screenshots show just sand, rocks and palmtrees, i hope they add some more vegetation and enviroment sets to have different landscapes.
According to PC Games the game will be priced with 15 euro, released on steam and additional content is planned.
There is a nice technology video here:
