The Game of Black & White: A Colorful History Behind a Monochromatic Title

Black & White, developed by Lionhead Studios and published by Electronic Arts, was a game that sparked immense excitement in the PC gaming world during the early 2000s. The game's colorful history began long before its release, with the development cycle stretching over three years from 1999 to 2001. At the time, it was an unusually long development cycle, and Lionhead had initially expected to have the game finished by Q4 of 1999. However, as release estimates came and went, excitement grew and dwindled, with the cycle repeating every six months or so with new interviews promoting the project and its larger-than-life designer, Peter Molyneux.

The game's promise was undeniable, with teaser footage showcasing unprecedented graphical detail and cutting-edge artificial intelligence with trainable creatures. The game's developers had promised a success story to fans of Bullfrog classics like Populous and Dungeon Keeper, and the hype was palpable. However, when the game finally released in 2001, it was met with a mixed response. Some thought they might have shipped a beta version instead of the finished game, and when it did work, some still felt that it didn't meet their lofty expectations despite favorable reviews from the gaming press.

Despite the mixed reception, Black & White is more than intriguing enough to revisit, thanks to its unique choices and unusual approach. The game's box art was a standout feature, with dual-gatefold covers showcasing the white and black moral paths of the game. This trope has become all too familiar in modern gaming, but at the time, it was still a fresh concept that piqued interest among gamers. The game's manual, printed in black and white, provided a comprehensive guide to troubleshooting issues from Windows 95 to Millennium Edition.

The installation process was accompanied by a product registration card and a 16-page guide covering everything from setting up the game on CD-ROM to troubleshooting common issues. While this guide may seem overwhelming at first glance, it's worth using as a reference guide after starting the game itself. The game begins with a logo that seems to be playing a teasing loop of gameplay footage before giving way to a short cutscene that sets up the world of Eden and the player's role within it.

The cutscene is brief but effective in setting the tone for the game, which asks players to choose a pre-made symbol as their religion. This choice will become the defining imagery of your character's impending godhood, and it's a clever touch that adds depth to the game's narrative. The player then gets to give themselves a name, and before they know it, they're embarking on a journey through a world filled with moral dilemmas and complex choices.

One of the most striking aspects of Black & White is its attention to detail in its presentation. From the minimally decorated cardboard sleeve that houses the game on CD-ROM to the dense pages of the manual, every aspect of the game's packaging seems designed to immerse players in the world of Eden. The game itself is a thought-provoking experience that challenges players to consider their moral compass and the consequences of their choices.

The game's developer, Lionhead Studios, had big ambitions for Black & White, and while it may not have met all expectations at launch, it remains an intriguing game that is worth revisiting. Its unique approach to storytelling and its attention to detail in presentation make it a standout title from the early 2000s PC gaming landscape.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enNow here’s a game with a colorful history,despite its monochromatic title.Black & White, developed by Lionhead Studiosand published by Electronic Artsfor Windows PCs in 2001, and later for Mac OS in 2002.And in the early-2000s PC gaming world, fewtitles were more hyped up than this one, beingthe first game from the newly-formed LionheadStudios.Not only was Black & White the debut titlefrom the ex-Bullfrog developers since they’dgone independent, but it had been in the worksfor over three years by the time it came out.Back then that was an unusually long developmentcycle,and originally Lionhead expected to have it done by Q4 of 1999.But release estimates came and went, excitementgrew and dwindled, and every six months orso the cycle would repeat with some new interview promoting the projectand its larger-than-life designer, Peter Molyneux.And make no mistake, the game looked insanelycool all the way from its announcement in1998 to its eventual release in 2001.Teaser footage made it seem like a successorto Bullfrog classics like Populous and DungeonKeeper, its graphical detail was unprecedentedat the time, and the promise of cutting edgeartificial intelligence with trainable creaturessounded amazing!Then it came out as such a buggy mess thatsome folks thought they might’ve shippeda beta version instead of the finished game,and when it did work, some still felt it didn’tmeet their lofty expectations despite favorablereviews in the gaming press.That being said though, I find Black & Whitemore than intriguing enough to revisit, it'sjust filled with so many unusual choices.Even the box is an unique choice, with dualgatefold covers showing off the white andblack moral paths the game was known for.It’s a cliche at this point consideringhow many games have gone down this route,with evil choices adding horns and spikesto everythingand good choices means butterflies and rainbows.But yeah, it was a neat idea at the time,enough to make me grab a copy in the early 2000s.Opening up the box you got the game itselfon CD-ROM inside this minimally-decoratedcardboard sleeve, a product registration cardand this 16-page installation guide coveringthe excitement of troubleshooting everythingfrom Windows 95 to Millenium Edition.Finally there’s the manual, printed appropriatelyenough in black and white.It covers a lotta ground, with 52 pages worth of densely-packed informationthrowing everything at you all at once.Due to the way the campaign is structured,I recommend using thisas more of a reference guide after you’ve started playing.Black & White begins with a white and blacklogo, followed by a Black & White logo, andculminating in a what amounts to a teaserfor Black & White itself.No real information or lore is provided, justa minute and a half of random gameplay footage.And it only plays the first time you startthe game, toomaking its inclusion that much more questionable.Once it’s done showing off its press kitsizzle reel, it’s time to give yourselfa name and choose a pre-made symbol, the latter of whichwill become the defining imagery of your religion.Once you’ve established your impending godhood,a short cutscene plays setting up the worldof Eden and your place within it.By which I mean you have no place at all,until the precise moment that you do.- “A land of innocents has no place forgods.-\"Until fate intervenes.”- “Keep away from the water!”“Wait! Stop!”- “When people pray, a god is always born.”- “Help, someone help us!”“Help our child!”“We call to the heavens!”- “Able to change eternity...\"-\"That god is you.”Yeah, this intro still really gets me in themood for some god gaming!That awesome music by Russell Shaw and trippycosmic imagery, dude.Something about it just gives me chills.- “Are you a blessing or a curse?Good or evil?”- “Be what you will, you are destiny.”Annnnd then just like that, it’s a clunkyold computer gameYeah, get ready for tons of mandatory hand-holdingand unskippable tutorials.Which, granted, at the time were still a fresh idea.And if you’ve never played before it’sa solid tutorial, especially since the manualleaves something to be desired in explainingthings clearly.However, if you have played before and simply wanna start a new game,then this tutorial is a real slog and the option to skip it would’ve been nice.Fans eventually patched this whole sectionout themselves, but more on that later.For now though, let’s follow along and seehow vanilla Black & White works, because evento this day I’ve never played anything quitelike it.So yeah, the basic idea is that you play asupernatural deityrepresented by a hand floating around the landscape.You’ve got two advisors representing thegood and evil sides of your conscience, andwho keep you informed of your godly optionswhenever big notable choices pop up.And there are a number of nearby human villagersthat have started believing in your existence,so your overarching goal is to increase theirbelief in you by manipulating the world usingyour god hand and a selection of miracles.But uh, the controls... are a thing.Black & White lacks a traditional user interface,and alternatively went with a mouse-driven layer of abstraction.Instead of windows, icons, and drop-down menus, you’ve got this floating hand of godand the world around it.Everything is designed to be controlled usingyour hand and a combination of mouse movements,audio and video cues, and context-sensitiveobjects.Left mouse button moves around the map, rightmouse button interacts with things, and combiningthe two buttons controls the camera.That is, if you’re using a mouse at all.Essential Reality teamed up with Lionheadto provide native P5 Glove support in 2002, stating it was“the perfect gaming platformto demonstrate the power and technical achievement of new P5T technology.”If you’ve seen my Oddware episode all aboutthis device, I’m sure you’ll react tothat statement with a fair bit of skepticism.As with most P5 experiences, it’s not thatit doesn’t work at all, it’s that it worksjust enough to become more frustrating thanif you weren't using it to begin with.Obviously, seeing as the whole game is playedwith a virtual hand it makes some sense toimplement a virtual hand controller.And as a result it does function better thanotherP5 demonstrations I showed on Oddware, but c’mon now.This game is weird enough on its own, no need to throw an infrared finger mouse into the mix.- “Faith in you is fallin’ like a stone.”- Ya don’t say.Regardless of wonky glove controllers though,Lionhead was deeply committed to the whole“disembodied god hand” idea in Black & White,making sure players rarely did anything otherthan click and drag, almost never having totouch the keyboard.Not that I recommend playing like that sincethere’s a buncha shortcuts that are onlyaccessible through the keyboard, many of whichthe tutorial never mentions.For example, you’re told that saving andloading the game occurs inside your temple.So you’d navigate to the building in-world,right click it to go inside, enter into themain central room, navigate to the save gameroom on the right, then click on a pictureto zoom into it, type in a title to save yourgame, then exit the save room, and leave thetemple to return to the game.Or you could just press Control+S on the keyboardand quicksave at any time.I know which method I prefer.There’s tons of stuff like this that seemsneedlessly cumbersome,implemented under the guise of “immersion” and “innovation.”But then you dig a little deeper and it turnsoutthere’s actually an easier or more efficient way of doing things.Like how there are unseen controls to slowdown and speed up timeby pressing Alt+1 and 2 on the keyboard.Or how you can forgo the bizarre screen edgecamera controls if you simply use a mousewith a clickable wheel.Anyway, all that to say that Black & Whiteis often simpler to play than it appears at first glance.And thank goodness, because what’s hereis immediately captivating, at least to meas a fan of the ‘god game’ and ���citybuilder’ subgenres.Despite what Lionhead said in the marketing,Black & White is less of a role-playing gameand more of a real-time strategy game withan emphasis on resource management and puzzle-solving.Each of the five main maps in the campaigncontain their own sets of challenges to complete,signified by golden scrolls indicating storyobjectives and silver scrolls providing side quests.But the core gameplay revolves around accumulatingthe resources of food, wood, belief, and villagers.Food and wood and pretty self-explanatory,acquired by villagers or by picking them up yourself.Belief is gained by performing miraculousactions within the view of villagers.And naturally, villagers themselves are acquiredby reproduction for the most part, as wellas converting them away from rival gods tobelieve in you instead.Overall it’s a pretty laid-back experience,lording over the land as your people go abouttheir day working, dancing, worshipping, screwing,building, eating, and complaining.Ahh it's nice.Too bad there’s a bunch of nonsense constantlyscrewing things up.For one thing, villagers often have questionablepriorities.So if you don’t want them wandering arounddoing whatever, generate some disciples bydropping people down near specific objectsand structures.- \"Disciple Forester.\"This is how you create dedicated builders,farmers, woodcutters, fishermen, craftsmen,and even breeders, all doing little more thaneat, sleep, and work.This is also one method of increasing yourinfluence,by creating missionaries and traders to nearby villages.Influence is shown by these wavy colored borderswhen you zoom out, and there’s a whole stackof variables affecting how quickly and howfar it spreads.And even then, it’s not so much a hard borderas it is a loose indicator of your power.Like, you can still reach beyond your owninfluence to manipulate people and objectsoutside of your own lands, but only for alimited time.Then you have to go back and try again torefresh your hand.It’s a bizarre mechanic at first, whereyou’re constantly moving your god hand inand out of rival territory, but you get usedto it.Tossing rocks and trees and things from adistance is also an option,as well as performing miracles.With good-natured miracles like generatingfood and forests, and offensive ones liketossing out fireballs and lightning.Another way to influence villagers is thecreature: a large animal with divine powersthat you’ll choose while playing the firsttutorial island.There are three creatures on offer by default,that being the ape, the cow, and the tiger.However, there are eight more creatures out there in the world to be unlocked,as well as four DLC creatures.Ahh, 2001.When downloadable content came in the form of self-extracting executablesfound on the developer’s website.For free, even!My how things change.Anyway, creatures.They’re big and powerful, but not too bigand powerful, at least not yet.Each one has to be fed, exercised, trained,played with, and scolded in order to increasetheir capabilities and size.And as with everything else in the game, thismeans using your god hand.So your can hand them food, bring them toys,rub them nicely when they do something youwant, or give them a good smacking if theydo something you don’t.Seems harsh, but it’s the only way to getthem to learnnot to take unholy craps in the middle of town.Or pick up and eat random worshippers.Or whatever else you deem unsuitable.You can also train creatures using leashes,making sure that they only hang out aroundcertain areas and witness you doing certainthings.Because yeah, they learn by exposure to yourgodly activities, eventually figuring outhow to perform many of the same actions andmiracles.Creatures also carry over into skirmish modetoo, so you’re not limited to training themduring the campaign maps.There are three of these skirmish maps thatyou can enter at any time, where you’llcompete with between one to three AI gods,or the same number of human players over aLAN or the internet.At least, before EA shut down the online serversof course, so playing against AI is the bestbet unless you use a custom multiplayer client.But yeah, creature training is key to survivinglater parts of the game, and thankfully theydo have a separate moral alignment from yours,so they can go around being a jerk while youplay a pacifist, or vice versa.Powerful stuff when used to your advantage.This also means that you’ll likely attractthe attention of other gods and their creatures,which can lead to a battle.Unfortunately, actually controlling fightsis not very engaging.It’s less direct and more like you’recoaching from the sidelines, clicking nearbyto say when to attack, dodge, and defend.You can also perform a couple of miraclesto help turn the tide, but the delayed actionsand camera swooping around the action makes this difficult,especially since these miracles rely on gestures.Oh yeah, that’s a thing.Performing miracles means performing gestures,accomplished by drawing shapes on the ground with the mouse.Again, eschewing keyboard usage and menu systems,miracles are selected either by clicking miraclegenerators or by drawing their symbol.And well, it kinda works?Most of the shapes are easily repeated, butsome of them are strangely picky with howthey're drawn so it's far easier to navigateback into town to choose them directly.As for gaining miracle access to begin with,there are two main methods of doing that.Raising this statue in your village centerwill ring bells telling your villagers it’stime to worship, and a percentage of themwill follow suit depending on how high you raise it.This causes a big ol’ worship party outsideyour temple, continuing until you call it off.Meaning villagers can pray themselves to deathif you’re not paying attention.But yeah, each village provides access tospecific miracles, so the more villages youhave the more miracles you can perform.And the longer villagers worship, the moreprayer power you have to perform miracles.Or, you can instead drop living sacrificeson the altar, with older villagers providinga little power and the youngest ones beingthe most effective.So, um.Killin’ babies, it's a legit strategy.The other method of miracle-making is completelyuntied to belief, and results from burstingthese one-shot miracle bubbles to provideaccess to a single instance of said miracle.Simple, straightforward, no need for infanticide!And absolutely necessary on the later maps.While there are only five maps and the firstone is an absolute breeze to play, don’tbe fooled by the false sense of security.Black & White soon stops playing around andbefore you know it, you’re being struckdown by far older, angier, and more powerfulgods than you.That first island map is seriously just atutorial, even after it appears the tutorial’s ended.Map two is where the game first opens up andhas you making real choices, like creatingnew buildings by constructing wooden scaffolding,combining them up to seven times and ploppingthem down wherever you like.This is also where you have to start worryingabout villager desires, like offspring, civicbuildings, and general expansion.And silver scrolls start becoming more important,providing opportunities to earn vital resourcesand miracles that’ll make completing thecurrent map more feasible.And then there’s map three, which is whereBlack & White finally starts to get real.A rival god captures your creature and tossesyou onto an uninhabited section of the mapwith almost nothing, whereas he already hasa temple and multiple thriving villages thatare quickly taking over everything.And each time you take over one of those villages,you’re smited with some kind of disaster,like humans he sets on fire that franticallyrun towards your own tinderbox of a village,and a bloodthirsty wolfpack darting towardsyour followers ready for an easy meal.Eventually you reach level four, where theisland’s cursed by constant thunderstormsand fireballs and the sky is blood red makingeveryone depressed and oh god.Anyway yeah, by the time I reached the fifthand final level,I was more than ready for the game to just end.But not Lionhead!Before its eventual sequel came along, theyreleased the Creature Isle expansion packin January of 2002.And it’s kind of an odd choice for an expansion,but at this point I’d expect nothing less from this odd game.Instead of providing a new campaign or something,it instead focuses on expanding creature options,taking place entirely on the new map of Creature Isle.New creatures are introduced, including achicken, a crocodile, and a rhinoceros, andthere’s a number of new additions relatedto creature-raising, the central goal of completinga sequence of trials for a group of formergodly minions called the Brotherhood of Creatures.Eh you know, it’s fun enough, it’s fine.But something I can go without.Not that I don’t recommend it at all, onlythat I find its new additions to be skippablein the grand scheme of things.And there ya have it, that’s Black & White!An enchanting experience that I find equalparts fascinating and frustrating, awesomeand awkward, impressive and imperfect.It sure is a Peter Molyneux game, maybe theMolyneux-est game of them all, and the resultingquirkiness is perhaps why it’s held ontoa group of vocal fans all this time.No matter how difficult it becomes to playit on modern systems, and erugh, this is onehard to run game on newer hardware.I’ve been playing this on my Windows XPbuild throughout this video, but there’sa whole slew of compatibility options, fan-madepatches, and SafeDisc DRM cracks to get itworking on PCs running Windows Vista and higher.Either way I do recommend giving Black & Whitea try sometime if you haven’t, and you’reinto real-time god game strangeness.Or if you just like slapping virtual cows.If you liked this video, then maybe you’dlike some of the other things I’ve done.I cover old PC games, retro hardware, andall sorts of classic computery stuff each week.As always though, thank you very much forwatching what you just did!\n"