In Opera Omnia you play a state historian who is charged by his politician friend to come up with convenient theories about migration in the past. Basically, you have to think backwards: if people were in this city during a plague, and if plagues reduce population, that means that they had to have had a lot of people in order to survive that plague: thus, plagues actually increase population if you work backwards in time.
The challenge of each level is that you're given something to prove -- such as prove that 300,000 people lived in this city a long time ago -- and you adjust migration patterns that will show how 300,000 people could have lived in that city a long time ago.
The gameplay may be a bit hard to "get" at first, and a lot of the people I've recommended the game to had a hard time wrapping their mind around the concept, but if you do manage to do it you'll find it a clever gameplay mechanic and some interesting challenges unlike most other games. There's also a pretty well-written story over the span of its 20 levels. - Paul Eres