Months after releasing its Mac conversion of the “god” game Black & White, Mac game developer and publisher Feral Interactive has released the first public beta of a patch that provides multiplayer capabilities. The 15MB patch is available for download from Feral’s Web site.
Black & White is a game originally developed for the PC by Lionhead Studios. The designer behind it is the legendary Peter Molyneux, whose previous credits include Populous and many other games. In Black & White, you assume the role of a god who lords over the people of the land of Eden. You draw your strength from the faith of your followers, and you can influence how they feel about you either by terrorizing them (and taking the “black” road) or by treating them beneficently (ergo, “white”). To that end you can make miracles happen or wreak havoc, and you can raise a mighty creature to reinforce your will to your subjects.
It’s a heady game that draws its influence from action and strategy games alike, and it offers much challenge to those who try it. The game has been in circulation for some months, but this is the first opportunity Mac users have had to give the game’s multiplayer functionality a try.
Other enhancements in the 1.1.5 beta patch include improved performance for saving and loading saved games. “Soccer pitch” and “Internet weather” features are included as well. Support has also been added for custom tattoo files without a .bmp extension.
Black & White is distributed in the United States by GraphSim Entertainment.