Video games - Black & White

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	Video games - Black & White

Black & White is a computer game developed by Lionhead Studios and published by Electronic Arts. It was released on the Mac by Feral Interactive. It was a god game released in 2001, which included elements of artificial life, strategy, and beat 'em up games.

It has been called the "spiritual descendant of Populous
."

The player takes on the guise of a god, ruling over an island populated by various tribes. The player's control over the island is manifested in the Hand, an animated on-screen hand which can pick up people or objects, throw things, 'tap' buildings to wake their occupants, and many other things. Use of the keyboard and buttons in the game is purposely low. The core of the gameplay is the player's Creature — a pet of sorts that can be trained to do almost anything, thanks to the game's complex AI. This Creature is trained by being placed on a leash while the player demonstrates the action the Creature is to learn using the Hand. With time and repetition, it will be able to do things on its own, to act in the player's place. At the centre of the player's empire is the Temple, the building at which tribesfolk worship, the Creature sleeps, and statistics, help, and options are available.

Your Creature

The game Black & White has a unique feature that allows you to control a creature that takes form of a regular animal, such as a monkey, a lion, a turtle, and many more. This 'pet' of yours starts out small, probably the size of a three story building, and later grows, literally, grows to be the size of a skyscraper. Each creature has its strengths and weeknesses. For example, the monkey is very intelligent and learns things quickly, but lacks strength, but on the other hand, the lion is almost the opposite. The lion is very strong, but not the fastest learner. Each creature has his own strenths and weeknesses. As a god, you can teach your creature to do simple tasks like keeping the village store full of food and wood by simply carrying trees and throwing them into the village store. But you can also teach your creature to perform miracles, such as the food miracle. This miracle simply lets you suply your followers with a limited amount of food. You can teach your creature to do such things to earn belief from that town. Depending on what kind of spells you teach your creature determines what kind of creature he is going to be. If you teach your creature to do nice things like heal the sick people, or water the fields, or things like that, he will end up being a good based creature. On the other hand, if you teach your creature lightning, and fireball, he will end up being an evil based creature.

Good/Evil

Another key gameplay mechanic is the good/evil spectrum. Depending on the actions the player takes, the Hand and Temple will slowly change appearance between a glowing pearly white, or a spiked, dark red. This visually indicates the player's position on the spectrum, and the tribesfolk will either be in awe or terror of the player. Same thing applys to the player. If the player is constantly being good by healing people and watering the fields, he will end up being a good god. But on the other hand, again, if he does fireball, or lightning spells on his followers, the player will be an evil god. Either way, your followers will always follow you, whether your good or bad. If you're good, then they will love and cherish you, and worship you. But then if you are an evil god, then they will fear you, and pray to you not to kill them and such.

Belief and Influence

Belief is simply how much the people believe in you. To earn belief, you need to have the people of the city believe in you. To get a city to believe in you, you or your creature must perform miracles to impress the people. If you don't do anything godly or amazing to a civilization that you already own, they will not believe in you as much and eventually stop believing in you all together. When a civilization doesn't believe in you anymore, you lose influence. Your influence is the area of the region that you can do things in. Anywhere outside of this area, you are practically useless. The more cities you have under your power, the more influence you have. So how do you get cities under your name that are too far outside your influence? That is where your creature comes in. You can send your creature anywhere on the region, regardless of your influence. Just have your creature walk down to the city, and slowly gain their belief and eventually you will have the city under your belt.

Other/Misc

The game helped to pioneer the use of mouse gesture recognition, allowing the player to cast spells using specific mouse movements.

An expansion pack, Creature Isle, was released in 2001, which shifted focus from the battles against other gods to mini games with the Creature.

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