OK, so last week I wrote about Populous II. This week, on a similar theme, I am remising about a game called Black and White (and its sequel Black and White II). One of my friends, who is really into Real Time Strategy games, bought this pack, but he did not really like it (I guess he’s more of Panzer General type of RTS fan).

Never one to turn down a game, I took the games in and gave them a good home. In the game you play a god, and you use a giant hand to perform various miracles such as saving people, creating forests, encouraging crop growth, and so on. The game is almost like a SIM city clone. You can get people to worship you through good will, or through fear. I’ve used fear tactics when I was frustrated that my enemy god’s subjects would not worship me when I gave them food (and other) miracles. It’s surprising how much more worship you get through fear rather than being a kind god (or course in the end being a vengeful god reflects poorly on your stats, if I remember correctly).

In any case, I got to the last level of the game, but I had a hard time moving through and finishing. The last stage was de-forested, over cropped, and possibly over-mined. (in other words, humans were there), so it was difficult to expand my sphere of influence and maintain enough power to destroy my enemy god’s temple. On top of that, the game suffered from not being backed up, so when my hard drive died, so did my save-file. Oh well. If I ever have some time, I may get back to it because it was quite an entertaining game (despite the constant “we need food!” whines of the people)