Populous fans?

[noobish hat]

I just got Populous on the Game Boy, minus the instructions. I have no idea what's going on! I've only ever played the demo of the PlayStation version. Anybody play the GB version, or care to explain how the game works in general? There's a whole tonne of icons on the menu screen, but no explanation as to what they're for!
Cheers

[Skull Commander]

I didn't even know it was on Gameboy. I have played it a lot on the Master System and Snes so could try and explain roughly how it works.

The aim of the game is to gain followers by leveling land so that your little dudes will settle and reproduce in larger numbers. The land is leveled on the console versions by holding down one of the buttons over some land then pressing either up or down to raise or lower the land till it looks smooth. Basically get all the land to the same level near your little followers and watch them build houses or ideally, if there is enough good land around them, castles.

Some of the icons on screen should represent God Powers, and as you gain more followers you should be able to inflict natural disasters via these icons on the Devil's crew (who should be lurking at the other corner of the map). Off the top of my head there are other icons which should do various things like turn your followers into knights (who can beat up devil worshipers) and there should be ankh type icon which you can use on a follower to turn him into a leader.

Typically once I have typed this all out I found this: http://www.lemonamiga.com/games/docs.php?id=1259 which may explain it all a little more clearly. That link is for Amiga but the general information should still be relevant.

[noobish hat]

Thanks man, I will have another go on it tonight. I did play it for a few minutes this morning and managed to make something happen by holding a button and faffing around with the d-pad, then the little guys went wandering off of their own accord. Can you order them to go places and do things in the original Populous? I think the PlayStation version was more of a straight up strategy game wasn't it?

[Skull Commander]

The only ordering you can do is to get the knights to beat up some devil worshipers or for people to follow your leader guy as far as I can remember. I only played a demo of the PS1 version but was never a fan.