Play this: ‘Reprisal’ revives the spirit of ‘Populous’

Peter Molyneux may have left Lionhead and Microsoft out of a desire to create something new, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t look back to the past now and again. That’s what John Caplin has done with Reprisal, a retro homage to Molyneux’s Populous, commonly thought of as the first “god game.” It preserves all the terraforming and village-conquering strategy action of the original, but the tilt-shifted pixel art style is gorgeous and right up to date — there’s more than a hint of Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery about the whole affair. A pixel art remake of a game that used pixels in the first place? Somehow, in 2012, it all makes perfect sense. You can play Reprisal for free in your browser right now.