Black & White was a great game that frustrated more than it delighted, but was still delivered with enough verve and ambition to make it worth playing. It’s a shame it’s currently unavailable to buy digitally, likely because the rights are tied up in the gutter between EA (the original publisher) and Microsoft (who bought and shut down developers Lionhead).
If you still have a physical copy of Black & White, you might be interested in Openblack. It’s a fan-run project that aims to create a state-of-the-art, open-source engine for running Black & White, and its first version was released yesterday.
Openblack has been in development for a few years now – at least since 2018 – and people have been contributing to the project on Github. Now you can download as pre-compiled binarythough some command line manipulation is still required to get it working.
This command-line requirement is a sign that the project is still in its early stages in many ways. Its creators consider it v0.10, so I wouldn’t necessarily rush to dig up ancient CDs. Still, there’s a lot of potential here for those looking for a version of Black & White that runs better on state-of-the-art machines and supports more operating systems. There’s already a Linux build available, for example.
In brief, I’d like to be able to play Black & White on Steam Deck someday, and this is probably the only way to do so.
Even if you can’t buy it digitally, it’s not impossible to play Black & White on state-of-the-art computers if you own a copy, it’s just not ideal. For those who want to try it, I think those ancient instructionswhich includes installing a slightly modernizing fan patch, should still work.
Of course, if I had to choose between following a fan-run open source project aimed at modernizing Black & White or following a Masters Of Albion game, I’d bet the former is more worth my time.
Thanks, GamesInLinux.
