Black & White

aka: B&W, Black & White: Entdecke dein wahres Ich, Black & White: Find out who you really are, Black & White: Odkryj, kim naprawdÄ™ jesteĹ›, Black & White: Ontdek wie je werkelijk bent, Black & White: Scopri chi sei veramente, Black and White, Hei yu Bai
Moby ID: 3598
Windows Specs
Buy on Windows
$30.00 used on eBay
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Description official descriptions

Spiritual descendant of the Populous games, Black & White is a 'god' game in which players take the role of a fledgling deity, called upon by people in need.

Entering the 3D world, players can manipulate objects, move people, and cast miracles. To assist the player, there also exists a creature with its own intelligence and personality. Both the players and their associated creature will evolve during the course of the game, becoming benevolent beings, cruel tyrants, or somewhere in between. As the player's characters develop, both their creature and the land itself will change, depending on their alignment.

Although the main purpose of the game is to work through the five lands of Eden and win the faith of as many of the tribes as possible, the game is somewhat open ended in its aspects of wandering, exploring, and developing the sidekick creature.

The creatures in the game feature their own artificial intelligence and will grow like a child, both physically and emotionally. They'll learn by example and put together their own moral codes based on what they witness and learn. Players can pet or scold their creature, nurture it, spoil it, or abuse it. In the end, Black & White is part strategy game, part role-playing game, part child rearing simulator, and part self-examination of the player's personality.

Spellings

  • 黑与白 - Simplified Chinese spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

357 People (333 developers, 24 thanks) · View all

Dutch Localization (U-Trax Multi Media Localization B.V.)
Dutch Language Test
Dutch Recording Studio
  • Soundwise
Dutch Voice Actors
Concept and Design Lead
Programming
3D Programming
Artificial Intelligence
Art
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 89% (based on 52 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.7 out of 5 (based on 138 ratings with 13 reviews)

One step closer to 3D reality...and God-Hood

The Good
First things first, you have to appreciate and applaud the developers and their vision in creating a game with a concept that almost every gamer has thought and dreamed about: Becoming a GOD!

Surprisingly stable for a 3D game, compared to a lot of 3D graphic games I've played, the details and animations of the graphics are quite astounding the first time around (I hate it when I get accustomed to the graphics the second time around).

The game starts with a very deeeep philosophical introduction cut scene on faith, gods, and all that, complemented with Indian (India) mixed music giving the "spiritual sense" to the already magnificent intro. For anyone that hasn't even thought about stuff like this, it may get you thinking...

Well, later on you meet the local natives (your worshippers) that celebrate your coming with hip-hop tribal dancing. These dudes and dudettes surprisingly dance better than most people I know! Two thumbs for the dance animation department!

You have 2 so-called advisors representing the good and bad side of your conscience which bears remarkable resemblance to the same advisors in the game Afterlife. They add some pretty good storylines but overall, they're practically useless.

Then comes your creature. You get to choose from the peaceful punching cow, the jumping curious orangutan (an ape from SE Asia, specifically the island of Kalimantan, Indonesia for you guys who flunked geography and common knowledge) and the tough kicking tiger.

Best overall highlight of the game is probably the process of teaching that stubborn creature of yours. Specifically in the area of magic, the process is long and you really have to be patient with the beast. But it's quite fun actually.

The Bad
Well, the game is very much playable and enjoyable. But unfortunately there are a lot of irritating features that should have been fixed the first time around. I really hate patches sometimes. Here we go:

  1. If I have to go through that tutorial one more time, I'll explode! Of which I have actually. This is one major irritating feature, every time you restart the game, which I often like to do just to familiarize myself with the game, you can't bypass the introduction. So you have to waste like 15-30 minutes going through the tutorial process of learning the ropes that you already now the first time around. You REALLY have to be patient when playing this game.

  2. If this was a city management game, it would be one of the worst in strategy games. Well, although it isn't it's not an excuse. The biggest problem is that there isn't enough information close hand. You have to go to the temple for detailed information, and every move you make is always in an animated approach that wastes a few seconds that kinda gets irritating in the long run. When your used to city management games where you get the information with a single press of a button, the animated nonsense Black & White provides is very much irritating. The technology isn't very advanced either. No battles between villagers, actually come to think of it, I was kinda of expecting something similar to Age of Mythology. That game represented more "Godly" power than this game, unfortunately. Come to think of it, those villagers are practically useless if you get down to it. All you need is your creature; he or she can do most of the job. The only use for villagers is if you don't have your creature, then you have to do things manually, directly or via villagers.

  3. Teaching your creature can be pretty draining. Key word: Patience. I like the teaching part. It's the result part that needs fixing. The only bridge between what you teach your creature and the reality of what they learned are those stupid advisor comments: "Your creature will do this thing more or that less". There are some comments that really are useless: "Your creature will be more inquisitive or more curious and such". What the hell does that mean? Curious doing what? Inquisitive doing what? It would be nice that there is a detailed list of that your creature has learned and how often the creature will do it. For instance I taught my creature to poo on rocks, but sometimes he Poo’s somewhere else. A percentage rate of his patterns would be helpful. Sometimes I'm confused if I taught the right or wrong thing, or if I'm teaching the bloke anything at all. I really miss the whole "menu" and "commands" section in most strategy games.

  4. When the developers said that you can choose any path you want, THEY'RE LYING THROUGH THEIR TEETH. It actually is more rewarding if you follow the good path. There are more accessible spells and such that will help you big time. So statistically, is more profitable if you be a good guy sometimes, although it's quite hard to remain a good guy after you know the lighting spell.

In the last campaign, your creature is cursed big time. I didn't follow the "normal plot", where you’re supposed to capture villages in a certain sequence. Doing so, gets my creature permanently cursed, which I'm totally pissed about. So to hell with freedom of choice in this game!

The Bottom Line
Get all those !#!@$! patches before playing this game or you'll end up swearing like me all the time. :) I really miss those DOS games...

Windows · by Indra was here (20756) · 2003

A grand experiment with user interfaces and AI - but nothing more.

The Good
The engine in this game blew me away. There are no icons or menus, and every task is performed by making gestures with your mouse. You can zoom far away, hundreds of feet above your island, or you can zoom in so closely that every colonist is in full detail. The physics system is also highly detailed - you can throw objects around, and your mouse movement in the "throwing" stage determines the arc, and how the object spins. Going "bowling" with a large boulder and several buildings was highly amusing (I played Evil, naturally).

The creatures can be very amusing, when they start learning. Some of the things they learn are so bizarre, you can't help but laugh and shake your head. For example, my Stupid Tiger(tm) learned that when he was thirsty, he could cast a Rain Miracle on himself. However, he also knows that if he happens to be on fire, he can cast the same Rain Miracle to save himself.

So what does he do, when thirsty?

He sets himself on fire with a Fireball, then casts the Rain Miracle. This moment of hilarious stupidity on the part of my creature bumped this game up several notches, in my opinion.

There is also a multiplayer capability, which seems to be the real meat of the game. A handful of players can connect to a host, and play with or against each other. In addition, the state of your creature is always persistent - that is to say, anything he learns in the multiplayer game will be carried over to any singleplayer game you load up later, and vice versa. If you find yourself doing poorly in multiplayer matches, just load up a single-player mission, and teach your creature some new tricks.

The Bad
Once you've played for a while, and get beyond the initial awe at the interface and engine, you quickly discover that there isn't an actual "game" here. It's essentially Populous - you build up villages, and the more villagers that believe in you, the more powerful you become. In addition, there are only five levels in this game - some of which recycle. Level 4 is the same map as Level 1 - with a very large environmental difference (it rains fire), but it's nothing "new".

And while funny at first, the pets become infuriating. My Stupid Tiger(tm) watched an enemy creature attacking my village with fireballs, and he learned that. No matter what I do, he'll always shoot fireballs at my village now. I have to keep him chained up at the temple, where he'll do no harm - he's essentially out of the game, unless I give him constant supervision and direction.

This game is also quite resource-intensive. This unfortunately makes it almost impossible to cast miracles with complex gestures - if your system starts hitting swap, and the action pauses even slightly, your gesture won't be recognized. It would be nice if there were keyboard shortcuts for miracles, but alas, there are only a couple of keys that actually serve any purpose, none of which are related to circumventing the gesture system.

The Bottom Line
A beautiful game world, and fans of Populous would love it. If that's not your thing, though, or you're looking for a good single-player experience, you might want to wait until it appears in the bargain bin.

Windows · by Dave Schenet (134) · 2001

Don't believe the hype!

The Good
This game is sort of like a cross between a RTS and Pokemon. You're basically a god, and you float around trying to convince people to worship you. It's a novel concept. Black and White certainly gets points for being unlike other games. It's rare that you get something this original.

The Bad
Unfortunately, the big gamble didn't pay off here.

The controls are clumsy. It's impossible to navigate to precise locations quickly. This in itself wouldn't be so bad, except that the game requires precise movements.

The creature hinders rather than helps. It would be nice to have a giant cow helping you do the routine work, but half the time it eats your villagers, and the other half of the time it's throwing them into the ocean. On top of that, some of the levels won't allow you to even use the creature, meaning that you have to do everything yourself.

The idea of this game is somewhat offensive. I don't know, maybe it's just me that feels this way. One of the objectives of this game is to convince these villagers to worship you, and thus add to your "godly influence". It seems to me to be a mechanism of self-gratification for people who don't get enough attention.

The story is uninteresting and uninvolved. It's there merely to give some mediocre reason why you're slapping your giant cow around in a desperate attempt to make it behave.

The Bottom Line
This game is absolute, complete, and utter garbage, and is not even suitable to be a coaster. If you ever see it on your shelf, you should avert your eyes and hope that it dosen't make other games suck by merely being in proximity to them.

Windows · by Nick Seafort (16) · 2004

[ View all 13 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Obscene Hermit And Wan Mar 18, 2009
HOW-TO: weather system And Wan Mar 3, 2009
Naming your Villagers from your email program And Wan Mar 2, 2009
Black & White Multiplayer Hints, Tips & Advice And Wan Mar 1, 2009
Creature Changer Crashing And Wan Mar 1, 2009

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Black & White appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Scrapped versions and plans

A version for Sony PlayStation was in development at one point by Bethesda, as well as for Sega Dreamcast probably by other developer - there were also plans to release this title for Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance. Ports were eventually cancelled and plans never reached a development status.

April 1st

During the game on April 1st, Your monster will leave smiley face foot prints in the ground instead of their regular foot prints. To do this, change your computer's date to April 1st.

Avatars

Originally the game was to include humanoid 'avatars', but the team eventually concluded that stroking and smacking around humans was a bit disturbing, hence the bipedal animal forms.

Death

If you ever wondered about that creepy female voice saying "Death" every once in a while, it means that someone in your village just died. There's a patch that let's you eliminate that voice if it's too spooky for your taste.

Gestures

One of the features in this game is "gesture recognition", allowing players to cast spells by drawing shapes on the landscape with the mouse and precluding the need for any icons on the screen. According to Molyneux, this is a direct reaction to the massive amount of icons present in his last game for Bullfrog, Dungeon Keeper. The icon interface for DK takes up a good third of the screen while playing.

In a beta version, signing Peter Molyneux's name as a "gesture" immediately gives you the most powerful spell in the game. Molyneux included this feature to give him an advantage in multiplayer. It is not known whether this made it into the final version.

References

  • When Peter Molyneux presented Black & White in the German TV-Show GIGA GAMES (NBC Europe), he activated the "show names"-function of the villagers. Then he scrolled over the land, gave his creature some advices and finally picked up a villager called "Jörg Langer", threw him onto a huge mountain, Jörg fell down and landed in a forest nearby. Peter Molyneux just said: "So you have to chop wood for the rest of your life!". At the time, Jörg Langer was the Chief Editor of the German gaming magazine GameStar which wrote an unenthusiastic review of the game ("just" 84%).
  • When you start the “boat-quest” to construct an ark (behind the wooden gates), you’ll hear some really annoying singing. Kill the middle on of the three singers and the others will go “Oh my God! You killed Kenneth!”, which is an obvious Southpark reference. After constructing the ark, you’ll see two people reenact the famous Titanic scene as well.

Sailor Song

The famous Sailor Song was, in the english version, sung by the Lionhead-people.

Sales

In 2001, Black & White won both the Gold- and Platinum-Awards from the German VUD (Verband der Unterhaltungssoftware Deutschland - Entertainment Software Association Germany) for selling more then 100,000 units (Gold) and more then 200,000 units (Platinum) in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. As the Gold-Award is not counted into the Platinum-Award, both awards total in between 300,000 and 700,000 units sold.

Saving

Saved games for Black and White are a little unusual. When you save a game it records the status of the island, but not the status of you or your creature. Instead, the status of you and your creature are part of your profile which can't be restored once it changes. So if you save your game at level 1 with a good god and a small creature, proceed to level 5 with your creature becoming huge and your god becoming evil along the way, and restore the save file you'll end up with an evil god and a huge creature on level 1.

Soccer pitch

Lionhead released a patch allowing you to create your own soccer pitch for your people to play in. When you have installed the patch, you can build the pitch with eight scaffolds from your workshop. And when your people have nothing to do, they come to the pitch and play for a while.

Weather

There was an interesting feature included with the game. If you had registered your game at www.bwgame.com, the weather in-game would match the weather in your area.

Awards

  • Gamespy
    • 2001 – Strategy Game of the Year (Readers' Choice)
    • 2001 – Best Articial Intelligence of the Year
    • 2003 - Most Overrated Game of all Time* PC Gamer
    • June 2001 - Game of the Month
    • October 2001 - #18 in the "Top 50 Best Games of All Time" list
  • PC Powerplay (Germany)
    • Issue 03/2005 - #2 Biggest Disappointment
    • Issue 02/2006 - #2 Hype Disappointment
  • Verband der Unterhaltungssoftware Deutschland
    • 2001 - Platinum Award
    • 2001 - Gold Award

Information also contributed by Alan Chan, Andrew Hartnett, Felix Knoke, Indra was here, Kartanym, Lumpi, PCGamer77, Sciere, Scott Monster, Ummagumma, Xoleras and Zack Greene

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Related Sites +

  • Black & White
    Official website
  • Official Game Site
    The Official Site for Black & White, which includes links to other fan web sites and the ability to register to play online.
  • Official Webpage (Mac)
    The official product page for the Mac version of Black & White on the publisher's website, which provides a profile of the game, a rundown of its features, an overview of the game's creatures, and purchasing information, among other such things.
  • Official WinAmp Plug-In
    A little before the release of the game, Lionhead made a visualization plug-in for WinAmp. It uses the game's graphic engine to show the bear dancing along with your music. The day passes to night and disco lights will also appear in the display.
  • Planet Black & White
    A fan page that is updated at least daily with new stuff, including 'bonus' creatures and other downloads.
  • The Final Hours of Black & White
    GameSpot covered the wrap-up production of Black & White in this lengthy article in their "Behind the Games" series.

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 3598
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Ray Soderlund.

Macintosh added by Kabushi.

Additional contributors: nullnullnull, Adam Baratz, Unicorn Lynx, JPaterson, Corn Popper, formercontrib, Zeppin, Patrick Bregger, yenruoj_tsegnol_eht (!!ihsoy), FatherJack, Danfer, R3dn3ck3r.

Game added April 3, 2001. Last modified March 6, 2024.