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Three years in the making, the epic Black & White is about to hit shop shelves worldwide. Developed by industry figurehead Peter Molyneux - responsible for classics like Populous and Dungeon Keeper, and one of the most widely-respected men in his profession - the game has been the subject of more previews and features over its development period than just about anything else.
But despite the attention lavished on this ambitious title since its announcement, it's not until now that it's become clear exactly what the game is. "Whatever you think Black & White is, you're wrong," Molyneux has commented at any number of demonstrations in the past, and as it turns out, he's not been too far from the truth. So with the final code in our hands, we can now finally reveal all - be warned, this is one massive undertaking and even a couple thousand words won't cover it. If you're not keen on hearing the nitty-gritty detail, feel free to skip out now and be secure in the knowledge this game is a whole-heartedly recommended buy.
Eye candy galore
Black & White is a classic god game, very much in the style of Molyneux's earlier Populous titles. Set on an idyllic green island, the player is cast as a god, with a number of little people and an area of land under his protection. With guidance, these people build themselves wooden villages and grow and harvest their own food, while somewhere else on the island, another god (or gods) is doing the same. Through the villagers worshipping their god, magical power is obtained, which can then be used to cast a number of defensive and offensive spells. More villagers mean more power, but you can only affect things close to your villages. Destroying enemy's villages or converting their followers to worshipping you will eliminate gods. Eliminate them all for victory.
So far, it's the standard god game recipe. But these games have always suffered from one drawback - although it's entertaining (and addictive) to lord it over your "little people" for a while, once the power trip wears off, there's little to hold the interest. Black & White is different, as the number of late nights and bleary-eyed mornings there have been around the office recently will attest. The key difference resides in Black & White's unique creatures - growing, evolving lifeforms that stay with you throughout the game, learning from your behaviour and changing their appearance to reflect it. Your creature can be taught to do anything you can do.
The interface is unique in that there are no on-screen icons at all. Your godly point of influence is a floating, disembodied hand, with which you can pick up and move things, interact with your creature, and - via a convenient and cunning system of mouse button-presses - move the free camera to change your view of the world. No keyboard controls (though there are a few handy shortcuts), no boxes on-screen, no clutter, no nothing. It's elegant, quick and intuitive, though a mouse with a wheel is needed for the full effect, and an acclimatisation procedure is necessary to get completely up to speed. Implementing a 3D floating camera system has traditionally been quite a hit-and-miss procedure - it's difficult to reproduce all the movement and rotational axes with just a mouse - but Black & White's system is excellent.
Casting spells is done with yet another innovative system - rather than clicking on icons, describing gestures with the mouse begins them charging. An up-and-down zig-zag movement creates a fireball, an S-shape invokes the "create food" spell, and a "W" shape summons a small raincloud, for you to water your crops or put out fires. There's a total of over 20 spells, ranging from offensive spells like lightning bolts or the destructive "Mega Blast" to the more friendly healing spells and the impressive "Create Flock of Birds."
Three of B&W's 20-odd spells
As you'll see from the screenshots, the graphics are superb. The land is presented beautifully, each village is different, and the spell effects are tremendous. You can zoom into your village close enough to see a worm poking out of an apple, and out far enough to encompass the largest of islands - in seconds. As you progress, the appearance of your lands, creature and hand are modified to represent your alignment. All this loveliness comes at a price, though - the inevitably high system requirements, which make it tough to recommend to anyone under 500mhz and 32mb Direct3D card, and even then, be prepared for some slowdown. Such is progress.
The zoom function in action
In the single-player game, the plot is advanced by gold scrolls that appear in the landscape - clicking on them will begin a cut-scene, generally giving some more story and issuing you with your next task. Although the single-player game contains just five lands, each one takes a significant time to complete - perhaps as much as ten hours for the later, more difficult ones. Silver scrolls also pop up from time to time, issuing you with other quests or challenges not directly linked to the plot.
A few of the early challenges
As with many things in Black & White, detailing these challenges too deeply would spoil the fun of discovery. Some early ones focus on practising use of the free camera and interface, and later ones are either based on normal gameplay-type objectives (collecting things, gathering resources, protecting an individual) or have an abstract puzzle or subgame without any direct connections with the rest of the game. Though these sound a little incongruous, they provide some interesting diversions. Rewards for successful completion of these include miracle dispensers (churning out one-shot spells,) new creatures, or occasional assistance in fulfilling that land's objectives.
Your godly seat of power is your temple, a spire-shaped construction that houses a number of rooms. It contains a library (where knowledge you've acquired is gathered,) a den containing a wealth of information about your creature, a map of the current island, and the mightily impressive engine presents it all beautifully.
Inside your temple
Village management is easy to grasp, but pleasingly hard to master. Although there are only two resources, food and wood, (both stored at your village's marketplace) each can be gathered in a number of ways. Food can be grown in fields, caught as fish, or made from the flocks of sheep, pigs or cattle your villagers tend. Wood is harvested from forests, but this process can be slow, so it's often prudent to take a godly hand in proceedings, taking trees to the marketplace manually. There are also spells to miraculously create food and wood.
Taking enough wood to a workshop will automatically make a scaffold, the basic building template in Black & White. Scaffolds can be combined to make bigger buildings - one makes a small house, two a larger dwelling and three makes a civic building like a crèche, marketplace or graveyard. The sequence continues up to seven, which makes a "wonder" - a huge building conferring bonuses on all your villagers.
Workshop, marketplace and a village
Apart from these resources, your villagers also have less concrete desires - protection, shelter, offspring and mercy. If your villagers are producing a reasonable number of children, continued expansion is necessary to shelter them all - it's very hard to balance a constant population, with deaths being replaced by young children, and in practice a healthy village tends to be a quickly-expanding one. This has positive effects on your area of influence - you'll be able to cast spells at a greater range from the town. Protection and mercy can generally be supplied quite easily, by a few carefully placed miracles or encouraging your creature to take a stroll through the village.
Your individual villagers can be told to restrict their activities by dropping them on or near an area where a task needs doing. They'll keep performing that task until they die - becoming "disciples," as the game terms it. So if you drop one by a tree, he'll become a forester and keep your storehouse supplied with wood. Dropping one by the sea will make him a fisherman. And dropping two villagers of opposite gender side-by-side results in what the game coyly calls "breeders."
The centrepiece of your village is a stone structure known, slightly inaccurately, as the totem pole. It's a star-shaped building with a column in the middle carrying your emblem, which can be raised and lowered to send different proportions of the village inhabitants to worship at your temple. Symbols on the points of the star depict the spells you'll be able to cast as a result. Your villagers, while at the temple, will dance in worship until told otherwise, so if you don't keep them supplied with food they'll start dropping dead. If they're not doing enough, dropping an animal or villager onto the temple dish will sacrifice them, giving you a one-off power boost.
Each village belongs to one of eight different tribes - Norse, Aztec, and so on. Each tribe has its own set of attributes, and each one builds its own different wonder with different bonuses. The appearance of the other buildings and the villagers varies from tribe to tribe, but they are functionally identical - nonetheless, the diversity makes the game yet more graphically interesting. You're not restricted to any one tribe, as maps usually contain a mixture, and in fact combining them is encouraged, as each tribe offers different spells.
Right: just about to create a Breeder disciple
New villages can either be acquired by building a new totem pole or converting an existing settlement. Either way, you'll need to impress the villagers before they turn to worshipping you. There's a wide variety of ways to do this, but all rely on you demonstrating your godly powers to them. You can throw stones at or over their village; you can use miracles to show off (this is hard, as often the new village is outside your area of influence); or, most often, you can send your creature to do the job for you. According to his temperament, he might entertain them by dancing, help them by providing food or wood. He might also eat a few of them, to frighten the rest into following you, or set some on fire, or start kicking trees about - like about everything in Black & White, converting villages can be done with benevolence or violence.
Managing your villages is simple to do, but the straightforward needs of your worshippers belie the subtle nuances and variations of your fulfilment of them. Many of the different factors are linked, and there are many ways to fulfil them, few of which are detailed in the manual, and for good reason - discovering them is part of the fun. Logical thought and experimentation is the key.
The inital selection - a tough choice
You gain your creature early on in the first level, as you are being taught how to use the interface by your two advisors - one good, one evil. The initial choice is between a tiger, cow and ape, but your choice isn't permanent - if you want, you can swap your creature type later in the game, keeping his personality intact. Each one has certain advantages - the tiger is impressive, but can develop a taste for your villagers, for example, whereas the cow is smarter but less awe-inspiring. He starts off little taller than your villagers, but over time he grows many, many times taller than them. Your creature will take on its own unique appearance as you play, and all the models are filled with character. It's often possible to tell what he's thinking just by looking at his face.
Training and directing your creature is made easy with the leashes. They come in three types - the rope Leash of Learning, the metal-studded Leash of Aggression, and the fluffy Leash of Compassion. The rope encourages him to watch and learn, while the other two affect his behaviour in fairly predictable ways, making him either helpful or destructive. Stroking him lets him know he's done something right - slapping him about lets him know he's been bad. Or makes him grow up bitter and twisted, should you prefer.
Training your creature to set fire to things
Anything you can do, you can teach your creature to do for you. If you teach him to do good things (keeping the villages supplied with wood or food, dancing to entertain your villagers) he grows up mild-mannered and friendly. Teach him to be evil, and he'll grow huge claws, a hunched back, and a taste for human flesh. This change takes place over many long hours of play - after about thirty hours (yes, thirty hours) he'll have grasped a basic set of spells and be able to perform simple tasks. He'll also have grown perhaps ten times larger.
So if he can only do the same things as you, why not just do it yourself? Crucially, once you've taught him some spells, he doesn't need worshippers to cast them, and can do so wherever on the island he happens to be - unlike the player, who can only cast spells close to his settlements. So if you want, and you can train him appropriately, he can walk right into the heart of the enemy's largest village and start setting people on fire. It's also occasionally useful to have him do repetitive tasks, like bringing trees to the marketplace or creating rain to water your crops.
Fight Club!
When two creatures meet, they can fight. This isn't the only outcome - it's perfectly possible for two friendly creatures to play together, or even learn from each other, but in reality a fight is usually the result. This is the only time you get to control your creature directly, by clicking on the enemy to attack and yourself to defend. You can also draw shapes to cast a few spells. It's basic but fun, and if it doesn't appeal he's quite capable of defending himself. He can't die, so if he takes too much damage he'll just dissolve to nothingness, re-appearing at your temple to recuperate. He'll keep any cuts or bruises he obtained during the fight, though.
The above describes some basic uses for your creature, but it really doesn't do justice to explaining its significance. Because you've invested such time and effort in raising your creature, you actually develop a relationship with him. He's a blank canvas on which you can paint whatever you like - he's your creation, and his faults and strengths represent your successes and failures in raising him. Later the game uses some clever devices to reinforce your commitment to him - but we'll leave the surprises for you to discover.
Isn't he sweet?
Though he's not actually thinking for himself, at times it's easy to be fooled. Like the time he was dancing to an unusually big group of villagers, and suddenly stopped and looked frightened. Nervous? Perhaps he knew his moves weren't really that fly. Or perhaps he was just behaving randomly and discovered, from our reaction to his nervousness, that he'd done something right.
From the point of view of the player, though, there's little difference, and this method of learning shares much with the learning behaviour of small children. It doesn't really matter whether Black & White actually provides a comprehensive simulation of learning behaviour or not - it appears to, and that's the key.
In contrast with every other element of the game, multiplayer seems a little of an afterthought. The selection of multiplayer and skirmish maps included is sparse, and the server browser is basic. But then, most people will use an external browser to locate a game anyway - and the layout of the map isn't anywhere near as crucial in Black & White as it is in most other online games. Clan support is built into the game, but still, unless we see some more maps made available, the supplied ones will eventually get dull - it looks likely that this is in progress, though, and the file format appears simple enough that fan-made map editors should be a cinch to write. (No, there isn't an official Lionhead map editor available at present.) However, just the prospect of a group of creatures interacting is an exciting one - and the chances of hearty support from Lionhead seem positive.
Worship harder!
So to the gimmicks. Black & White will read your Outlook contacts list, and name your villagers after your mates. It will check your email and ICQ, and let you know when messages arrive. It will use an Internet weather server to mimic the weather outside in the game. Your creature will create his own web page, and this can be uploaded to Lionhead's servers for the world to see. With a Logitech I-Feel mouse, you can feel the texture of all the objects in the game. If these features interest you, good luck - they don't add a great deal to the game.
Nonetheless, Black & White is unique. So many times we've seen ambitious designs and grandiose promises trimmed back in development, resulting in games that bear little resemblance to the early demos. But Black & White does, as promised, give a convincing impression that something is alive inside your PC. The world it creates is so compelling you'll be riveted to your monitor for months. Molyneux has neatly avoided the usual problem of lasting appeal in this genre by giving the player a uniquely strong connection to his creature, and thus a tremendous stake in the game. You'll play to protect and nourish your creature - your villages and lands are just a means to this end. All that before you take him online, to meet, learn, play and fight with other unique creatures from all over the world.
Both the kind and generous, and the evil and violent paths through the game are equally enjoyable - but interestingly, if you naturally play the game one way, it's hard to go back and try it differently. It's not impossible to raise an evil creature while playing as a benevolent god, nor is it impossible to go against your instincts and play the game through again, with a different alignment - but it requires a surprising amount of self-discipline. In this aspect, at least, you could consider Black & White to have succeeded in its "personality test" objectives.
However, you shouldn't underestimate this game. Though it's unquestionably one of the finest titles it's been our pleasure to review, it's demanding both in time and money. Money, because you'll need a high-spec PC to play it at its best, and time, because if you're the kind of person who plays a game for ten hours and then gets bored, you'll see such a small fraction of Black & White's delights as to make the experience pointless. It might seem pitched to appeal to non-gamers, but the investment required from players means the unprepared will not find it a satisfying experience. There are a few additional minor flaws, and if we didn't like this game so much, we'd point them out; such as, the graphical problems that occasionally cause your creature to dance through hills or villagers. Or the way the difficulty curve picks up quickly, meaning some skirmish games are needed to get you and your creature up to speed on a few basics. But we do like it that much, so we won't.
Though it's not for everyone, Black & White will reward the dedicated with one of the most involving and fulfilling gaming experiences out there. To the surprise of many, Molyneux has delivered on almost all his promises - a stunning achievement. Though five maps in the single-player game doesn't sound like value for money, there's many, many hours of fulfilling, rewarding and enjoyable play in there. As long as you have the specs and time for it, then it doesn't matter if you buy several games a month or only a few a year, Black and White is simply unmissable.
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