Populous on SNES is one of those games that makes you feel like an actual god—if that god had a weird obsession with terraforming and micromanaging tiny worshippers. You start with a handful of followers on a patch of land, and your job is to reshape the world (literally, you raise and lower terrain) so they can build, multiply, and eventually swarm the enemy’s territory. It’s slow at first, but once your little guys start spreading like ants, it gets weirdly satisfying.

The rival god AI isn’t messing around either—they’ll flood your land or drop disasters on you if you take too long. Early levels ease you in, but later ones turn into this chaotic back-and-forth of raising mountains to block their armies or drowning their villages with well-placed earthquakes. The controls take some getting used to on SNES, but once it clicks, you’ll be sculpting hills and smiting enemies like it’s second nature.

It’s janky by today’s standards, but there’s still something hypnotic about watching your civilization crawl across the map. Just don’t expect any mercy from the other gods.