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By Brad Cook Some games test your reflexes. Others test your critical thinking skills. The game Black & White, however, is a test of your personality, according to designer Peter Molyneux.
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 Choose whether you will be good or evil. Choose your creature. But choose wisely. |
More specifically, the game is a test of how you would act if you were a god
or goddess. Would you be kind and benevolent? Or would you be wrathful and
quick to punish your followers? Those are the questions at the core of the game, available in a new Platinum Edition for Mac OS X from publisher Feral Interactive.
Black & White “is a marriage of several different gaming [types],” explains Molyneux, “but it’s unique in that it changes to reflect you as a player. I see it as a giant personality test.”
Beautifully rendered graphics take advantage
of your hardware.
of your hardware.
Rule Your Kingdom
Like such games as The Sims and Tropico, Black & White places you in charge of a world over which you are lord and master. If you ignore the little people who populate that world, they will suffer; if you tend to them and make sure they are productive, they will thrive. You direct them to gather food and wood, construct buildings (including places of worship, of course), and even act as missionaries to other areas of the world.
The Black & White Platinum Edition features the full version of the game as well as the Creature Isle expansion pack, which offers a new realm for you to explore. You can also purchase the game and the expansion pack separately, if you wish.
Why would you need missionaries? Well, you begin the game with a sphere of influence over a single village, and you must convince its inhabitants that you are all-powerful and therefore worthy of their worship. How you decide to play the game dictates how you convince the villagers to worship you: a benevolent god might summon rain to nourish the people’s crops, while a malevolent god might summon a lightning strike to set the crops ablaze. Either way, the villagers will begin to worship you in a hurry, and soon you can extend your influence to neighboring villages.
Your island is yours to grow.
A Mix of Megalomania and Responsibility
You don’t have to carry out your dirty work by yourself, however. Once you master such basic techniques as picking up villagers and moving them (or flinging them through the air) or breaking boulders in two, you can choose one of three creatures to act as your servant. There are 15 creatures total; see the sidebar “Let Someone Else Do Your Dirty Work” on page two for more information. Before you can send the creature off to do your bidding, though, you’ll need to train it to perform certain tasks.
“I suppose [the game] became a mix of megalomania and responsibility,” says Molyneux. “I wanted to explore the idea of giving someone ultimate power and allowing them to wield that power in any way they chose, but at the same time give them a creature to teach, nurture, and bring up however they wished.”
Like your treatment of the game’s little people, you can be cruel to your
creature or nice to it. The former will make your creature evil, while the
latter will make him good. As your creature gets older, he will become more
autonomous, which means that he may strike out on his own and eat some
villagers, or perhaps help them, depending on his disposition.
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Multiplayer Patch: Grab the patch that adds multiplayer compatibility and fixes many bugs for Black & White. |
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Creature Isle Expansion Pack Read the feature for the exciting expansion pack for Black & White. |
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Black & White 2 Read the feature for the exciting sequel for Black & White. |
Choice in Black & White also extends to the gold and silver scrolls scattered around each of the game’s four worlds. While you don’t have to click on them and carry out the tasks they assign, the story won’t move forward unless you click the gold ones. (What happens at the end? You’ll have to find out for yourself; Molyneux is mum on the subject.)
And if you don’t click on the silver ones, you won’t get the opportunity to collect some cool rewards, including new, more powerful creatures. (See “The Creatures” on page two to discover where you’ll find each of them.)
Train your creature to be kind or cruel.
Choose the Better Operating System
There’s one last gameplay decision we haven’t covered yet: Will you play Black & White in Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X? According to publisher Feral Interactive, which converted the game from the PC to the Mac, the obvious choice is Mac OS X.
Why? Well, Feral explains that Mac OS X makes more efficient use of system resources, so it handles virtual memory better, which is important for a memory-intensive game like Black & White. And the multiprocessing capabilities in Mac OS X allow the game to render the environment at the same time as it handles other processing tasks, which improves system performance.
The villagers worship your creature
(out of fear or respect).
(out of fear or respect).
Of course, before you can install Black & White, you’ll have to decide where to buy it, but that’s an easy one. Simply visit the online Apple Store, an Apple retail store near you, or an Apple authorized reseller. One of them can help you become the toughest deity in your neighborhood.
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