Peter Molyneux's final game Masters of Albion will release in April - "it's the culmination of my life’s work"

New trailer gets handsy with the undead

Peter Molyneux and 22cans volition merchandise their caller deity sim Masters of Albion connected Wednesday 22nd April via Steam. They’ve besides pumped retired a caller trailer, affluent successful accents, exploding barrels and chromatic circles. If it were a crippled from immoderate different developer, I’d beryllium modestly anticipating it. But it’s a Molyneux associated - his past crippled earlier retirement, allegedly - truthful instead, I’m looking astatine it with a substance of sadness and suspicion.

If you’ve someway overlooked Molyneux during your voyages crossed the gamerwebs, he’s among the creators of foundational deity sims Populous and Black & White. He’s besides a erstwhile Microsoft honcho, known for chaotic promises astir acorns that whitethorn turn into existent oak trees, and Kinect games that wholly aren’t on-rails. He is inactive benignant of cherished/mythologised online arsenic an impassioned originative who can’t defy moving his rima astir the task astatine hand, to the despair of his improvement team.

I myself stay susceptible to his inclination to gush astir his latest projects, arsenic you mightiness conjecture from my comparatively carefree announcement write-up of Masters Of Albion backmost successful 2024. Still, there’s a constituent wherever uninhibited enthusiasm starts to look similar actively misleading players, crowd-funders and investors, and Molyneux passed that threshold galore moons ago.

He has treated america to disappointment aft disappointment, portion lashing his brandwagon to assorted unsightly caller technologies. Fantasy mounting aside, Masters Of Albion looks a batch similar Legacy – different 22cans townbuilder which became a blockchain crippled during development, selling £40 cardinal successful onshore deed NFTs earlier release, with 1 “plot of land” going for £670,000 successful cryptocurrency. It launched roundabouts the clip ample swathes of the NFT-buying faithful had woken up to the information of NFTs astatine ample being a grotesque Ponzi scheme.

Before Legacy, determination was Godus, different deity game, and its combat-oriented spin-off Godus Wars. Godus was pitched arsenic a instrumentality to signifier for the deity sim successful the hands of a past master. It attracted fractional a cardinal quid successful crowdfunding via Kickstarter successful 2012, but launched successful a dire state, with galore promised features either missing oregon arguably intolerable to instrumentality acknowledgment to the developers’ prime of middleware. Godus Wars was expected to beryllium escaped to buyers of Godus, but successful practice, it came with a pop-up complaint beyond the archetypal continent.

Both games were ignominiously removed from Steam successful 2023. At the time, Graham (RPS successful peace) commented that they should beryllium remembered arsenic “evidence that Molyneux's exuberant what-if attack to interviews and promotion is not that of a benevolent, irrepressibly originative Wonka-like figure, but of a businessman who desperately wants your wealth but hasn't made thing worthy buying successful implicit a decade.”

Masters of Albion doesn’t look to incorporate immoderate blockchain bullshit, astatine least. They aren’t advertizing immoderate generative AI contented either, contempt Molyneux calling generative AI “the aboriginal of games” backmost successful September 2024. It’s a substance of strategy, municipality management, enactment crippled and operation defence that erstwhile again aims to “reimagine the deity crippled for today”, successful the words of the latest property release.

There are a mates of ways to play. Firstly, you tin beryllium a floating deity manus - casting spells, plonking down buildings, lobbing boulders, and godhandling the townsfolk Black & White-style. Secondly, you tin person NPCs to tally astir successful their shoes, combat buglins of assorted kinds, trade gear, and raid dungeons. There’s a day-night cycle, with waves of monsters emerging aft acheronian to battle your settlements.

As you’d expect from a crippled successful the Bullfrog tradition, it’s each spun for laughs: you tin person chickens and marque your townspeople formal similar fools. But there’s a superior borderline successful specified “key themes” arsenic “power and responsibility”, “industry versus past magic”, and “freedom of prime and consequence”. It’s the enactment of a squad including Bullfrog and Lionhead alumni Mark Healey, Russell Shaw, Iain Wright and Kareem Ettouney.

“Masters of Albion is the culmination of my life’s work, a crippled that owes truthful overmuch to titles similar Dungeon Keeper, Black & White, and Fable,” quoth the Molyneux successful a property release. “It’s a wholly unsocial crippled that we anticipation volition delight players, a crippled that brings God Games into the modern gaming scenery and puts the genre firmly backmost connected the map.” We shall see. If I were you, I'd instrumentality to the likes of Reus 2 and WorldBox for the moment.