Last year Ubisoft’s From Dust took a stab at replicating the classic God game Populous – where rather than directly controlling your minions you would manipulate the environment to shepherd them where you required – and it failed spectacularly thanks to Ubisoft’s terrible DRM and the game’s awful, clunky controls.

Thankfully for those of us interested in the God game genre Reprisal Universe has been crafted with a great deal more care. The first game from designer and artist Jon Caplin is a fantastic homage Bullfrog’s 1989 classic. The distinctive pixel graphics and catchy retro soundtrack fit perfectly together while the tutorials helpfully guide you through the basics of the game: directing tribesmen, terraforming land and mastering the weather to your own ends.

Reprisal is beautiful in its simplicity of presentation and control but is by no means style over substance. As the missions progress the AI can become an overwhelming force if not kept in check and if conflict is what you’re after there is even a skirmish mode which will randomly generate an island to play on with random totem abilities and pit you against the CPU.

Reprisal Universe has everything going for it – a lovely art style, catchy music and most important of all, it is good, simple, fun. It is available to play for free in your browser at reprisaluniverse.com or you can download a desktop version by clicking here.

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