Black & White Create Isle is a god type of game in which you incarnate god and raise a tribe.
Designed by Peter Molyneux (of Populous and Dungeon Keeper fame), Black and White is a god sim wherein you vie for control of the land by impressing its inhabitants. As a god, you don't directly control your followers (aside from the occasional boulder through the roof and whatnot); rather, you derive your power from their worship.
The first and most interesting part of the game is interacting with your creature, whom you select from various bipedal animals (we chose the upright-walking cow) and who is the physical representation of your godly power. Your minion begins its earthly life as an untrained servant, and you train it in the ways of worshipper management and resource control. You teach the creature specific actions by leashing it to your hand (your cursor) and demonstrating the action. When your creature gets it, a lightbulb appears above its head, indicating that it has learned the trick. The tough part is educating the beast about when it's appropriate to do the things it has learned — you reinforce its behavior positively by stroking it, negatively by smacking it around (or both — oh, the joys of mixed messages!). You can train your creature to perform complex tasks, such as aiding and dancing with your devoted villagers, and eating or othenvise terrorizing nonbelievers in towns outside your sphere of influence. Training gets tiresome, though, because you must keep a watchful eye on your animal if you want to educate it effectively.
The meat of the game is the busy work of keeping your villagers happy (or scared into submission, if you prefer) by providing food, wood, and the occasional miracle. Oddly, as a god, you can only hold one thing or perform one action at a time, so allocating resources and directing villagers gets a little tedious (a well-trained creature is a big help here). Taking over towns that aren't under your influence requires that you demonstrate your godly might in various ways, including raining fireballs from above and planting crops. Of course, once a population is flying your colors in its town square, you must defend it against attacks and the persuasive powers of other gods and their creatures.
And just as in real life, villagers never stop complaining — their constant whining is enough to drive any deity to the bottle.
Although it's Carbonized, Black and White seems to prefer the familiarity of Mac OS 9 — the 1.1.3 patch helps..., but we still had to stand by and watch the game duke it out with OS X over monitor resolution every time we started up. And don't expect to hop online and out-god your Wintel buddies just yet — though the printed manual claims the availability of a multiplayer support patch in March 2002, we're still waiting.
In addition to the unusual and compelling gameplay, clever little touches spring up throughout Black and White: As your good or evil tendencies emerge, your temple's appearance gradually changes to reflect your inclinations. Don't be surprised when your villagers are named after people in your Outlook address book (Bonus: You can throw your boss in the seal). The game even creates a custom Web page for your creature.
Yoon, Paul. (June 2002). Black and White. MacAddict. (pg. 54).