Black & White is a god video game developed by Lionhead Studios and published by Electronic Arts for Microsoft Windows in 2001 and by Feral Interactive in 2002 for Mac OS.

Black & White received universal acclaim on release; reviewers praised the artificial intelligence, uniqueness, and depth, although the system requirements and bugs were criticised.

The player interacts with the environment via an animated, on-screen hand, that is used to throw people and objects, tap houses to wake their occupants, cast miracles, and perform other actions.

Gold scrolls initiate a significant event (including the main story), and silver ones a minor task to perform for a reward.

Khazar reveals that it was he who sent the vortex and requests assistance against another god, Lethys, Nemesis' underling, in exchange for resources to rebuild the village.

[43] Molyneux told Official Dreamcast Magazine that he had sought to recreate the "fantastic feeling" of destroying ant nests as a child.

[50] By this time, the engine was being developed by three people: Alex Evans, Jean-Claude Cuttier, and Scawen Roberts (who had joined from a courier company called, coincidentally, Black And White).

Integrating the storyline was found to draw the player through the game in an unexpected manner, which led to the development of characters like Sable, the Creature trainer, and the advisers.

[60] Mark Webley (who had programmed the creature's artificial intelligence on a testbed version) had become project manager, ensuring routines were listed on task schedules.

The game was supposed to reach the alpha stage by 18 June, but by summer, it became clear that development was behind schedule, and the release date was pushed back to 10 November.

[69] Molyneux said that might have been "insanely ambitious" with regard to the standards they set themselves for the graphics, because the system requirements were high and much of the custom software needed to be written.

"[30] The models for the trees, bushes, and other landscape features were created in 3D Studio Max, and initial graphics development was done in 2D using Adobe Photoshop.

Black & White's online community was handled by two servers in London, where the clan creatures were stored to minimise the possibility of cheating.

Electronic Arts became involved in the production; testers were employed (they found three thousand bugs), localisations were checked, and a marketing campaign was launched.

Molyneux commented that "It was as if the game just didn't want to be finished and perfected", and remarked that the team felt like they had run a marathon after fixing the bugs.

[76] Because players encountered technical issues, rumours that Electronic Arts had shipped beta versions circulated; Lionhead denied them.

Bullfrog's James Leach, who had previously worked on titles such as Dungeon Keeper and Theme Hospital, was recruited, and wrote many challenges, all the dialogue, and enabled the team to make the advisers characters rather than just sources of information.

[83] The advisers' animations and emotions were triggered by keywords in the script document, a Microsoft Excel file consisting of several thousand lines.

Molyeux told Leach about the ways of good and evil and the system's reflection of the player's behaviour, and provided him with a digital copy of the Bible with instructions to study the concepts due to their connection with gods and men.

[86] Leach, Molyneux, and Webley were considering the final story when Jamie Durrant, an artist, became involved in the scripting language.

[95] Shaw's lack of experience in playing "ethnic" instruments was a problem, but Steafan Hannigan, an expert on the subject, was enlisted to help.

[98] The team decided to implement anthropomorphised bipedal animals, because their humanoid form evoked empathy, and credibility in their potential sentience.

[38][30] An online version, Black & White: The Gathering, was in development, and would have enabled creatures to interact those of other players in a cut-down game environment over the internet.

Molyneux explained that there was to be a server, whose worlds would have been set up with a match-making system and players would have been able to do battle, like last man standing.

[139] IGN's Tal Blevins complimented the "wildly imaginative" single-player mode, and the graphics, describing the game as "a visual masterpiece".

[133] Playboy's Michael Ryan complimented the "intelligent" sense of humour, "intense" visual appeal, and addictiveness, but criticised the frequent micromanagement and ambiguous objectives.

[125] GamePro's reviewer complimented the realism, stating that it is like interacting with a real world, and echoed others' views on the artificial intelligence by describing it as "impressive".

[127] Originality was commended by PC Gamer's reviewer, who also eulogised the "[b]eautiful" graphics, "awesome" interface, and its creativity,[131] and Gamezilla's Alex Karls, who also remarked the game "lives up to its hype".

[122] Keith Pullin of PC Zone compared the resource management to Age of Empires, and complimented the humour and pop culture references and praised the combination of original ideas, remarking that "B&W is as captivating as it is ingenious".

Black & White was selected by GameSpy as the most over-rated game of all time in an article published in September 2003, citing a lack of true interaction with the townspeople and poor use of the much-lauded creatures as reasons it disappointed.