{sidebar id=1}This very well might be the shortest game of the week, ever.  Aztec God Game is nothing more than a remake of the mega-hit Populous by Bullfrog.  If you are an old school gamer, you remember and loved this game as one of the best ever made for the SNES.  The original is so old; it could be played on DOS.  So if you remember it, and love it, stop reading and go play it.

Still here?  Ok.

Populous… I mean Aztec God Game gives you the role of a God who must watch over your tribal people and help them grow up by terraforming the land.  Every builds, upgrades, and fights automatically, your job is to simply flatten the land.  Of course there is a competing tribe with its own God, controlled by the computer.

Along the way you are given multiple spells to help hinder the enemy tribe.  And by hinder, I mean kill.  As your people construct buildings you gain mana, which can be used to cast your various abilities.  You’ll command the ability to spy on the enemy, shoot lightning, cast plagues, make man eating swamps, scorch the earth, raise a hero, flood the earth, and most importantly, start Armageddon.

Although this sounds like a relatively heavy-handed game, it's actually very lighthearted with no real violence.

Game accessibility

Aztec God Game can be played with just a mouse or the mouse and keyboard.  If only using the mouse, you must be careful which areas on the map you click because the game uses so called “smart flattening” where the game tries to interpret whether you want to raise or lower the land. Alternatively, you can hold down different keys when clicking to be more specific about raising or lowering.

Everything is captured in text. The audio is actually rather annoying, and I highly recommend turning it off.  The text is nicely large white font in some areas and easily read black script elsewhere.

Unfortunately, the game is rather fast-paced and many people are asking for speed settings; we can only hope the developer implements speed changes.  In the meantime, the game is broken up into levels with a save feature after each level.  You can pause the game at any time, although you can't interact with it while paused.  Interestingly enough, the game even pauses automatically if you change windows.

The tribes are red and green, but enemy buildings are marked with a skull and cross bones.  Additionally, it can also be difficult to read the hit points of your followers. Fortunately, it doesn't really matter as the action is so quick, you'll often never have a chance to monitor individual followers.

Overall, a very fun game with acceptable accessibility.  In some ways, it's a very difficult game to describe - it won't be everyone's cup of tea but if you like God games, tycoons, strategy games, etc. you will like this remake of one of the most classic games ever created.