God, The Disembodied Hand

Control is through one extension of you, the mouse cursor. There is no interface, no menu for selecting buildings. Through a great feat of programming, every single command in the game will be done through a disembodied hand that you wave about with your mouse. This has the advantage that it makes B&W feel more like another world rather than just another RTS. Spells are cast by 'drawing' simple or complex shapes with your mouse on the screen, for example, to make a protective circle of fire around one villager, you would just draw your mouse round and round that villager until a wall of fire shot up around it.

Control is a focal point, you play God and your people obey you, everything in your world is to your design. Be evil and the world around you morphs into a dark, fearful place with dark red hues and black buildings. Your avatar will change accordingly too, it will get a hunched back, eyes become slit and it may sprout long, sharp claws. However, a 'good' avatar will become tall, gleaming and good-natured and your world will become a beautiful haven for its inhabitants.

Manipulate And Eliminate

Manipulation is another key point, everything in the game world is there for you to pick up, throw, move about or perhaps simply use it in the way it is meant to be used. Let's say you wanted to teach your creature how to use trees to its advantage in battle, you can uproot a tree, bringing up the (up until now) undisturbed soil and roots while in the process of leaving an impression in the ground where the tree used to be. This simple course of action is complicated in itself; next you could proceed to throw the tree at a nearby villager while your avatar is watching; after a few attempts it should pick up the tree and throw it at a villager like you have done. The next step after this little hullabaloo is that because you and your pet have been throwing grown trees at innocent villagers, repeated evil deeds will start to make your empire change slowly and start to become evil, just a tiny bit, your empire is always slightly changing with your actions.

Carrying on with the total manipulation, each of your tiny villagers has his or her own important part to play within your world be it telling you you've got new e-mail or making babies at a herculean rate. You can set each villager on your planet to do one particular task, they won't stop doing this until you give them the signal; after all, you are their god and they will strive to carry out your bidding, the villager you have given the task to also becomes an important figure within a village because he/her has been blessed by you, the god. While not an entirely new aspect to the god game genre, the aspect in question has been picked up, given a jolly good shake, brushed down and smartened up.

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