From Dust Brings back the God Game

Written by Aaron Mitchell | Tuesday, 24 August 2010 00:22

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Back in the 80’s when I was but a young lad and my favourite item of clothing was a pair of red jeans held up with rainbow suspenders (really) game genre’s were very different animals than they are now.

RPG’s usually had you controlling four characters who you never saw and wandering around dungeons, flight simulators were awesome and Double Dragon was the greatest fighting game ever made. One of the most critically acclaimed games was a title called Populous, designed by a wild haired young man named Peter Molyneaux which had you playing as God (he was alive back then, God not Peter Molyneaux, I mean Peter was alive back then but he still is now).

The god game genre allowed you to manipulate the natural world and the environment but not to have any direct impact on the little people running around your world. You could hinder or help them as you saw fit.

Twenty years later and the genre has basically turned into the Sims, which I’d generously describe as Queer for the God Guy. You’re divine omnipotence is used to choose drapes and wall paper. Not exactly the evolution of the genre I was expecting while I played Populous on my Amiga 500 and mis -sang the lyrics to the Ghostbusters theme song.

Luckily we have Eric Chahi, another piece of gaming history who created Another World (aka Out of this World), an 80’s adventure game that was far ahead of its time. Eric then made another game we don’t talk about, then disappeared.

Now he’s back with a few choice words about how the games industry is creatively constipated and a new game called From Dust which looks like a serious dose of prune juice. A new god game that will, hopefully, relaunch the genre.

Check out the tech trailer and screenshots below.

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