BlackAndWhite is a game by LionheadStudios which promised revolutionary GamePlay? and ArtificialIntelligence. Created under the watchful eye of PeterMolyneux.
UI and AI were cool, but GamePlay? was shite, and the moralism grated. There was too much micromanagement but there were lots of cool things too. The moralism only grated if you listened to the angel; listen to the devil instead and you would soon be congratulated on smiting the hell out of people.
- Some design decisions definitely "odd".
- It's unfortunate that all the AI was spent on the creature, because the villagers are so utterly helpless and stupid that tending to them becomes utter tedium that distracts from the various game quests and conquest, and pretty much drives all sense of fun out of the game. Unless you play as evil - in which case you only need to keep them alive, not comfortable (and you can always sacrifice en masse if population gets out of hand). Good is really quite dull (but then again, my other favorite game is DungeonKeeper? 2).
Some people love it, some people hate it. Most people hate it.
- It's different, all right, including the way it (sadly) stores saved-game information in the Windows registry. To migrate saved positions, or preserve creatures, you need not only the saved state files, but also a manually extracted registry key subtree to restore later.
- The open-ended nature of what you can do and how you can treat or mistreat the people is intriguing, however. Can spend forever just playing around, totally ignoring any game "progress". Very hard to keep tiger creature tolerably "good", takes much early training, but worthwhile to see the AI in operation when goals are "good".
See
http://www.lionhead.com/,
http://www.bwgame.com/
[Note: These sites require Flash to get anything done at all! What drivel! And how do you go about downloading the game files if the server can't even resolve its own links? What a mess.]
- About par for many gaming and commercial sites. High cool factor, low usability.
GameSpot
? has a long article about
BlackAndWhite's development process at
http://gamespot.com/gamespot/features/pc/btg_bw/index.html.
Uses GestureRecognition as its only interface (no icons/buttons).
BlackAndWhiteTwo? was released in Fall 2005. Its feel is quite different from the original. Some of the problems of the original game were resolved (e.g., micromanaging villagers, creature training), yet new ones were introduced (hope ya like creating cities building by building!). Perhaps most interesting to note is that GestureRecognition is not the only interface; there are buttons and menus. On the other hand, it is a different game than the original, so perhaps comparing their interfaces is comparing apples to oranges.
CategoryGame
Black And White