Populous man Glenn Corpes' iOS world manipulation, animal herding game Topia is shaping up impressively
Finger on the globe
I had a first look at Glenn Corpes' world shaping and animal herding game Topia at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in June, via its publisher Crescent Moon.
A couple of months on, at the Develop conference in Brighton, UK, that early technology demo was clearly becoming more of a game.
The way you manipulated the land - creating mountains and changing the position of the seas and rivers, directly with your finger - could now be used to move around the various types of alien creatures, either herding groups together or splitting them up.
What's my motivation?That's where Corpes - who was the head of technology at Bullfrog and has had plenty of experience of such games having worked on the Populous series - is now focusing his attention.
Still, even as sandbox technology demo, Topia looks like it would be a thoroughly enjoyable and stimulating experience, as this video of the game running on a iPad 2 shows.
We expect to hear more details of Topia - noticeably gameplay and the business model - as it gets closer to its autumn release.
You can read more about the game's development via Glenn's blog.
