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“I’m so tempted just to tell you…”
Legendary game developer – and game development tease – Peter Molyneux has discussed his next project, and talked up its gameplay as featuring a mechanic that’s never been seen before.
Speaking to GameReactor at the recent Gamelab conference in Barcelona, Molyneux was reluctant to give many firm details of the game or this idea to avoid – in his words – people subsequently getting “very annoyed and angry” when their expectations of Molyneux’s words are met with reality.
“In days gone by, I would just start telling you about the whole game and the whole game design and why it was going to be the most brilliant game in the world,” Molyneux said. “I’m not going to do that.”
What Molyneux did say, however, was that this all-new mechanic would be part of a more “familiar” environment that was “more like a kind of Fable, Black and White, Dungeon Keeper kind of experience”.
This description appears to relate to the fact this project is planned first for PC and consoles, rather than other titles at Molyneux’s 22Cans development studio that were designed around smartphones.
Indeed, should this project materialise as planned, it will mark Molyneux’s first project released on consoles in over a decade – since on-rails Kinect game Fable: The Journey, back at Lionhead Studios in 2012.
“We’re definitely leading on PC and console, mainly because we need the power,” Molyneux confirmed.
“This game is the first game really I’ve coded – or been a coder on – since Black and White,” he continued. “So it makes it very special for me. It has been evolving and we’ve been exploring ideas about it for almost five years now. So it’s very, very close to my heart.”
It’s unclear if this project has evolved from Legacy, the project Molyneux announced back in 2019 and later said would involve the blockchain. It was originally planned as a workshop-tinkering industrialist sim, inspired by Molyneux’s first-ever game The Entrepreneur.
Since leaving Fable maker Lionhead behind in 2012, Molyneux’s game release track record is a decidedly mixed bag. His experimental mobile app Curiosity: What’s Inside the Cube? found huge success, though controversy reigned over his promise of a life-changing prize for one lucky player.
Next up was controversial god sim Godus, which launched in early access back in September 2013 and remains in early access a decade on. The Trail: Frontier Challenge followed in August 2017, published by Kongregate.
Word of what’s next for Molyneux and 22Cans has been quiet, ever since the studio announced layoffs but said it would struggle on with game development, back in December 2021.
But now we know: Molyneux’s back coding a new game.
“Every part of me wants to tell you everything about it,” he concluded. “But, you know, that would be silly.”
