Black & White was a god-game that frustrated more often than it delighted, but it still delivered with enough zest and ambition to be worth playing. It's a shame it's not available to buy digitally anywhere right now, probably because the rights are mired in a ditch between EA (the original publisher) and Microsoft (who bought and shut down developer Lionhead).
But if you still have a physical copy of Black & White, you might be interested in Openblack. It's a fan-led project to create a modern, open-source engine to run Black & White, and the first build was released yesterday.
Openblack has been in development for a few years now—at least since 2018—with contributors to the project on Github. You can now download it as a pre-built binary, but it still requires a bit of command-line fiddling to actually get it running.
This command line requirement is a sign that the project is still in its early stages in many ways. The developers are evaluating this as v0.10, so I would suggest not rushing to dig out your old drives. Still, there is a lot of potential here for those looking for a Black & White version that works better on modern machines and has more OS support. For example, a Linux build is already available.
In short, I'd like to be able to play Black & White on Steam Deck one day, and this might be the only way to make that happen.
Even if it's impossible to buy digitally, it's not impossible to play Black & White on modern computers if you own a copy, it's just less than ideal. For those willing to try, I think these old instructions, which involve installing a slightly modernising fan patch, will still work.
And of course, if I had to choose between pursuing a fan-led open-source project to modernize Black & White or pursuing Masters Of Albion, I'd think the former would be more worth my time.
Thanks, GamingOnLinux.