Love him or hate him – and we know there are a lot of people who reside in the latter camp – Peter Molyneux is one of the most influential game designers of all time. His work in the '80s, '90s and 2000s laid the foundations for entire genres, and the titles he has overseen during his time in the games industry have sold millions of copies.
In more recent times, of course, Molyneux has gained a reputation for over-selling and over-hyping his projects. Curiosity: What's Inside the Cube? generated negative publicity when its eventual winner said the prize was "worthless", while his Populous spiritual successor Godus struggled to gain an audience. Molyneux's latest venture at his 22cans studio is Legacy, which gained a hostile reaction in 2021 following the decision to allow players to 'buy' virtual land within the game using NFT technology.
Given his reputation, it's understandable that Molyneux has decided to moderate how he talks about upcoming projects. Speaking to Gamereactor at the recent Gamelab event in Barcelona, the famous designer hinted at his next game but stopped short of revealing too much detail:
So 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. And people looking at this would then get very annoyed and angry. So I'm not going to do that.
I do think, though, we have stumbled, and it feels like stumbling on a mechanic that has never been seen in a game before. I feel like we are exploiting that mechanic in a world and an environment which may be familiar to people. And because it is in a familiar environment, it'll be a lot fresher. And a lot of this is very mystical because I'm trying to avoid to tell you what it's like. But it's going to be a lot more like a kind of Fable - Black and White - Dungeon Keeper kind of experience.
I mean, I'm so tempted just to tell you about or show you that the pitch video we've been showing, but that would be the start of the slippery slope of telling everyone.
So it looks like we'll have to wait a little longer to hear what Molyneux's next game is all about, but he did add one more thing:
The only thing I can say is that this game is the first game really that I've coded been a coder on since Black & White. it makes it very special for me. And secondly, it has been evolving and we've been exploring ideas about it for almost five years now. So, you know, it's very, very close to my heart. Every part of me wants to tell you everything about it. But, you know, that would be silly.