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Peter Molyneux's new game is about pioneering
Web and smartphone game publisher Kongregate and Peter Molyneux's 22 Cans are teaming up to launch a new mobile game. The Trail is an Oregon Trail-style adventure title where players strap on a backpack and pioneer their way across an undiscovered wilderness. As they progress, they can collect items that can be used to craft weapons and tools that'll help them hunt down sources of food. That can then be traded with other explorers to build a fortune that'll enable you to settle down in a Deadwood-style community. It's available for Android and iOS devices, although it's yet to hit the latter's app store just yet for free, with in-app purchases.
Mega mobile update to Godus is 'game-changing'
That is the general point of an update, after all. The first major expansion to the mobile version of Godus is live today, adding a seafaring migration mission and a new, desert land for your Followers to inhabit. Players will have to build an Ark, fill it with 500 Followers and set sail for the arid environment of Weyworld. "It's a desert world where the trees and rocks you're familiar with in Homeworld are replaced by cacti and baked earth," 22Cans says in a blog post. "That's not the only difference, however – in Weyworld, crops need to be built on verdant land and mines on rugged land if your want them to flourish and your Followers to prosper." This marks the beginning of the Frontier Age in Godus, and the update includes a new Timeline, cards, stickers and abilities to unlock. Abilities include the power to keep skies blue and clear or stormy, call down a more powerful meteor, dig directly downward, and crop rotation. The update also refines the Voyage system: "You no longer have to complete a Voyage within a limited amount of time. However, the more quickly you complete a Voyage, the more points you'll earn. What do points mean? Points mean prizes!" The update also enhances the iOS version of Godus. The Android version is due out soon and the Steam version gets the Balance File Editor modding kit on October 31.
Godus half-off this weekend on Steam
Peter Molyneux's world-shaping strategy game Godus is 50 percent off this weekend on Steam, allowing amateur deities to take out their frustrations on an unsuspecting populace for under ten bucks. Godus was released as part of Steam's Early Access program, and is frequently updated with new content as development progresses. The game's Kickstarter campaign raised over £520,000 in 2012, and developer 22cans continues to keep backers informed of new project developments and other additions. Godus is currently available for Windows and Mac. A Linux port is also under consideration.
Godus v1.3 update adds bronze age, agriculture, weather system
Peter Molyneux's god game Godus has received a sizable update on Steam, where the game has been available as an Early Access product since last month. In addition to a multitude of bug fixes, the version 1.3 update adds bronze age amenities and agricultural advances, as well as tweaks to Follower behavior and some modified tents. Amongst the 12 new bronze age additions are politics, farming and cartography, according to the update's patch notes. New Farmer Followers can grow crops outside of settlements, which can then be harvested to feed the population. A new weather system will also affect your tiny virtual folk, with lightning storms that damage Abodes located outside of settlements. Meanwhile, felt tents now house and produce Followers, rather than generate Belief. Followers can now also communicate with the player through Prayers, which we assume are delivered via Post-It Note like in Bruce Almighty. Okay, probably not. Molyneux recently told us that Godus' evolution is an ongoing process, and that it can take anywhere from "a day to two weeks" for him and his team at 22 Cans to crank out a new build. "That's an amazing, incredible way to develop a game," he said. "I'm not a designer, I'm a design curator."
Let the god games begin: 22cans' Godus beta available on Steam Early Access September 13th (update: iOS and Android release dates)
A collective effort pulled back Curiosity's curtain early this summer, and now it's nearly time to play god. On September 13th, 22cans and Peter Molyneux will make the beta release of Godus, the studio's latest "experiment" in god gaming, available via Steam Early Access for PC and Mac. The early release will cost eager overlords $19.99 and allow them to "sculpt every inch of a beautiful world," and, of course, destroy those worlds in multiplayer battles with other virtual gods. The Kickstarter-backed nod to Molyneux's Populous reached its funding goal in December of last year with the promise of PC, Mac and mobile compatibility and continued his focus on the video game as social experiment. Final release details are still under wraps but you can see an updated trailer after the break. And for more Molyneux, check out our interview from E3 2013. Update: We had a chance to catch up with Molyneux following his keynote at PAX and, among other things, he revealed release dates for iOS and Android versions of Godus: October 31st (Halloween) and November 14th (Day of the Colombian Woman), respectively.
Molyneux's Godus available September 13 through Steam Early Access
Peter Molyneux's 22cans is set to launch Godus for PC and Mac through Steam Early Access on September 13. The game is priced at $19.99 (£14.99 / €18.99). "For a long time I've been excited with how the game is evolving, I already feel there is nothing in the world like Godus," said Molyneux. "This is the type of game I have dreamt of making since first getting into the industry; having people play the beta and give us valuable feedback while doing so, makes that dream a reality." Godus was announced last year and successfully Kickstarted in December with £526,563 ($852K) in funding.
Curiosity: A worthwhile shame
I played Curiosity: What's Inside the Cube. I played it for a few hours over the course of its six-month lifespan. I feel a small amount of shame in confessing this, shame that I don't feel about anything else I've ever played – not Hooters Road Trip, not Dragon Power, nor any of the other terrible things I've subjected myself to. At least those things were games. Curiosity is a repetitive chore with a thin layer of "game" over it. It's gamification, applied to nothing. But despite making fun of it relentlessly – and, on a couple of occasions, even simultaneously while making fun of it – I tapped cubes. My ironic detachment failed, and I couldn't help but buy into the hype on some level, at least enough to participate. I admit that even though I knew it was a dumb game predicated on a promise from someone notorious for hyperbolic and unfulfilled promises, the novelty of the "life-changing prize" intrigued me. And so I joined thousands of strangers in helping some guy scratch off the world's most annoying lottery ticket.
Curiosity ends; Winner will become Godus' god
We've been following the saga of 22Cans' Curiosity ever since it started last year, and after speeding up the project just recently, Peter Molyneux has announced via Twitter today that it's now done. The last cube has been tapped by a winner in Scotland named Bryan Henderson, and the prize is that Henderson will become the actual god of Godus, which is Molyneux's next game in the works. As you can hear in the winner's video, Henderson will get to help decide the rules of the game going forward, and there's a little monetary compensation as well: He'll get a cut of the proceeds whenever someone spends money in Godus. Thus ends the saga, then, of what's in the cube. Or maybe not -- the app is still live in the App Store, and the last cube currently is showing a Twitter search of the hashtag #whatsinthecube. 22Cans has finished its experiment, and while the cube didn't exactly become a mainstream phenomenon as Molyneux may have hoped, the project, we heard, was profitable, and considering that someone did reach the end, I'd call it a success. We'll have to wait and see what Godus looks like when finished, and then if Molyneux has any other social, experimental ideas like this in the works going forward.
Molyneux's Curiosity cube concludes [Update: Winner's video added]
22 Cans' Curiosity: What's Inside the Cube ended today, revealing a live stream of tweets using the hashtag #whatsinsidethecube to the public. Peter Molyneux noted via Twitter that the last person to chip away at the cube is located in the UK, and was the sole person to see what's actually at the middle of the cube, which is seemingly a link to a video and more than just a collection of tweets. "The winner should have a message on their cube now!!! Asking them to email a special email address, hope they share," Molyneux tweeted. Curiosity launched in November 2012 on the App Store, and had players around the globe chipping away at pixel-like squares on the multi-layered cube to collectively get to its core. We will update as we learn what was really inside the cube, providing the winner decides to share it with the world. Update: The video given to the winner of Curiosity has been shared by Molyneux and 22 Cans, and can be seen above. Update 2: Spoiler alert! The prize for the winner of Curiosity, as outlined in the video by Molyneux himself, is that they "will be the god of all people that are playing Godus. You will intrinsically decide the rules that the game is played by." Godus is a god game in development by 22 Cans, which received over $852,000 in Kickstarter funding for the project in late December 2012. Molyneux added that the winner, a certain Bryan Henderson of Edinburgh, Scotland, will also "share in the success of the product," in that "every time people spend money on Godus, [he] will get a small piece of that pie." Molyneux said he'll reveal details on how the prize will be carried out at a later date.
Peter Molyneux's Curiosity cube is now open, contents still a mystery (update: prize revealed!)
After seven months of cooperative tapping, Peter Molyneux's Curiosity experiment is finally over: the cube is open. As Molyneux's studio, 22Cans, teased the game's last layer over Twitter, players descended upon it, chipping away the last million cubelets in a matter of minutes. "We have a winner," the game's creator wrote on the social network. "They should get a message now." 22Cans is currently trying to validate the player who tapped away the final block. After the final block disappeared, so did the cube, presumably to be opened privately by the winner. So, what was inside the box? We may never know -- but if you just happened to win, fill us in, would you? Update: The winner asked Molyneux to share the winner video with the community. Their prize? Godhood, according to 22Cans. The winner will be featured as a deity in the company's next game, Goddus, and will able to "decide on the rules that the game is played by." The winner will get a share of the revenue generated by the title. Check out the full video for yourself after the break.
Molyneux's Godus goes mobile, Mobage with publisher DeNA
Godus, the Kickstarted god game from Peter Molyneux's 22Cans, will be published on mobile devices by DeNA in western territories, Japan and Korea. Godus raised £526,563 ($852,000) with Kickstarter in December, exceeding its goal of $£450,000 ($730,000). It will launch on PC and Mac, alongside mobile devices Android, iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. Godus will use DeNA's Mobage platform for mobile and social games, joining previous handheld iterations within the No More Heroes, Final Fantasy and Professor Layton franchises, to name a few.
22Cans speeds up the Curiosity cube
Peter Molyneux's 22Cans studio put out Curiosity on iOS last year, as a sort of a social game-slash-experiment. The idea was that hundreds of thousands of people would be able to download the app, and then use it chip away (by tapping) on a virtual cube, unearthing layer after layer of virtual cubes, with only one person getting the chance to eventually tap on the center. Originally, the project was scheduled to end sometime next year, but that's become too long for 22Cans: The company has decided to update the app down to the last 50 layers. "I think six months is a long time for this to go on," Molyneux has told Wired. "We're on the cusp of it being forgotten about." That's certainly true -- the iOS market moves quickly, and Curiosity never really did catch players' attention the way 22Cans hoped it would. But Molyneux believes that even though the app may have fallen down many players' priority lists, the project is worth following through on. "It is life-changing in any measurable way," he says about the reward hidden at the center of the cube. "I'm telling you, you want this." Interesting. Curiosity has also been playing with monetization, offering in-app purchases to both remove cubes from the game more quickly, and even offering to put them back on for a certain price. But for all of its experimenting, Molyneux says the game has only made "a few tens of thousands" of British pounds. 22Cans is also expected to announce another new title -- the company is currently working on a followup to Populous called Godus, which it ran a successful Kickstarter campaign for, and boosting Curiosity's interest will help them promote the next title after that. So if interest picks up again, it may not be long at all before we finally see these last 50 layers chipped away. And then, we'll all get to finally find out just "what's in the cube."
Curiosity's end may coincide with new Xbox reveal
Curiosity: What's Inside the Cube is now officially down to its last 50 layers. Even Peter Molyneux is impatient for 22Cans' bizarre iOS experiment to end, telling Polygon: "Enough's enough, for crying out loud." The game, which is about tapping to remove dots from a cube to reveal the "life-changing" secret within, features a countdown timer running toward the projected end of the experiment, when one person will clear the final layer. "I thought six months was about the length of time that Curiosity should go on before it closed, and this is almost exactly the six month anniversary of the end of Curiosity," Molyneux told GameSpot. "Bizarrely, as part of that controversy, is that the end of the cube – the last layer of the cube – might well be, I mean probably if you look at our analysis of probability, the same day that the next Xbox is announced. Which would be a bizarre twist of fate." The next Xbox is due to be revealed May 21. Or a bizarre twist of Pete? Regarding the coincidence, he told GameSpot, "There's an interesting opportunity, possibly, for me to ... well, I can't say any more than that. There may be some words from me around that time. I'm not saying any more." Confirmed: The next Xbox will come in a box made of billions of tiny cubes. Along with today's news, 22Cans released the above video, which features visual proof that people like Curiosity at least enough to scrawl dirty words into the cube.
Assassin's Creed 3 director Jamie Stowe joins 22cans
Assassin's Creed 3 level design director Jamie Stowe recently joined Peter Molyneux's 22Cans studio. Stowe will assume the role of technical director for Godus, the developer's spiritual successor to Populous. Stowe worked at Codemasters as a QA lead and level designer prior to joining Ubisoft Singapore in 2009.22Cans successfully raised £526,563 ($852K) on Kickstarter in December 2012 to fund Godus' development. Molyneux and his crew posted a new video update to 22Cans' Facebook page, which welcomes Stowe to the team.
Godus Kickstarter concludes at £526K
Peter Molyneux's 22cans studio has completed its Kickstarter for Godus with £526,563 ($852K) in funding, from 17,184 backers. The game, which is a spiritual successor to Molyneux's Populous, reached its Kickstarter goal of £450,000 two days ago.If you'd like to check out some prototypes for Godus, 22cans gave an overview earlier this week, following up with a multiplayer video. The game will be out when Molyneux says it's out.
Molyneux's Project Godus reaches Kickstarter goal
Peter Molyneux's studio 22cans has reached its £450,000 ($730K) Kickstarter goal for Godus, a spiritual successor to Molyneux's classic game Populous. The Project Godus Kickstarter reached its goal with a little under two days to go.The studio has been a PR kick the past couple of days, summoning a pair of prototype videos that helped drive donations for the game's final days on the crowdsourcing site. The first gave a basic overview, while this morning's showed off the prototype for Godus' multiplayer.
22cans' lead game designer talks about Curiosity and moving forward to Godus
Gary Leach is the lead game engineer at 22cans, which you probably know by now is game designer Peter Molyneux's experimental startup aiming to put together 22 different game experiences before actually releasing a full title. So far, 22cans has favored the iOS and Mac platforms with their releases: Curiosity is their first experiment, and it launched on the App Store to both great, well, curiosity, and even some complaints about server outages and bugs. But the game is better now, says Leach. "It's going really well," he told TUAW today. "In some ways we're kicking ourselves for planning it so badly, and we had some big decisions to make on whether we're going to take the thing down or try and poke through this." In the end, however, 22cans decided to update the game -- they released version 2.0 this week, and Leach says "the community feel is still just amazing." At this point, Leach says the game's popularity has essentially leveled out. People come and go, and he says a lot of users will come back occasionally just to see how the game is doing. But there are about as many people leaving the game as arriving, so while the numbers are obviously down from launch, they're steady at the moment. Aside from the technical bugs, Leach says one of the hardest things about the game has been balancing its casual and hardcore audiences. In-app purchased items in the game are sold for hundreds of thousands or even millions of in-app coins, and Leach says that "the range of motivations" to earn that currency "is enormous. These beginner types will come on and earn a few thousand coins and think they've done well. But the hardcore audience, 100,000 coins for them is no work at all. So how do you balance that?" Leach says that's the main crux of the conversations during Curiosity's development, and that "a lot of it came down to who's going to be on middle marker and how much they can earn." Users continue to tap away at the big cube in Curiosity, but 22cans and Leach have moved on to the next experiment, a "re-imagining" of Peter Molyneux's original god game, Populous, called Godus. The team has headed to Kickstarter for funding on this project, and Leach says that's because while Curiosity was the kind of experiment that was meant to say "hey world, we're here," Godus is more involved, and it's "the kind of title that potentially publishers may not have gone for." Not much is known about the game, but it will allow players to warp the geography of a virtual world, as well as oversee virtual citizens living and fighting in various battles together. Currently, 22cans is hard at work on a prototype of the game, and Leach says the prototype is mostly being developed on Mac and iOS (the studio has also announced that the final title will be available on Apple's platforms as well). But the current prototype, according to Leach, is only code "that we are using for our own internal evaluation process. None of this code is going to go into the final product. This is code that's going to get binned." So Godus as a finished project hasn't even started yet. As a developer, Leach says he's very excited to work on it, however. He started "kind of midway through the Curiosity project," and says he "was spending the first few weeks trying to catch up to what we were doing." But Godus, on the other hand, is more his speed. "When we first started talking about Godus, that's when I thought this was the product I was meant to make," Leach says. "I'm doing something here that is going to run beautifully on mobile devices and is going to look as good as a desktop game." Godus' Kickstarter is up and running now, and with about seven days left, 22cans has picked up just under three-fourths of the money it's asking for. But Leach's enthusiasm is still very strong. "There's so many reasons to be excited."
22 Cans talks Curiosity: What's in the Cube and more
22 Cans is Peter Molyneux's latest endeavor -- a smaller indie game company from the creator of titles like Populous, Black and White and Fable that's putting together more experimental games on platforms like iOS. The company's first title is Curiosity, a game/experience that arrived on the App Store a little while ago. And now the developers are doing some interviews talking about how Curiosity is doing, and what's next for 22 Cans going forward. Jack Attridge is up first; he's a game designer at 22 Cans, and he recently talked with 148Apps about how Curiosity has changed during development. Initially, it was very straightforward (and the game is still very simple): Players would just tap away "cublets" off of a gigantic cube, in a sort of massively multiplayer attack of destruction. But the devs found that the game needed even more rewards, so they added in combo bonuses and a clear screen bonus for clearing cubes completely off of the iPhone or iPad's screen. He hints at what's next with the game as well: "There is something that people tapping on the cube are doing, and are already involved in that they are unaware of," says Attridge. "I can't say what that is yet, but in the future...that tapping will have counted for something." We're not sure what that means, but Curiosity has been interesting so far, and odds are it will continue to be so. Over on RockPaperShotgun, Molyneux himself chimes in to say that 22 Cans has been overwhelmed by the reaction to Curiosity, both in terms of its servers being overrun, and Molyneux's own emotional state (at one point in the interview, he reportedly breaks down and cries when considering just what he wants the experiment to mean to the world). 22 Cans has also just launched a Kickstarter for another game, called Project Godus and supposedly based on Populous itself, so Molyneux talks about how he's approaching game design these days. It sounds much more agile and responsive than the big titles he's worked on in the past. Both interviews are definitely worth reading, especially if you've been as fascinated by the experiment behind Curiosity as I am. It'll be interesting to see what happens with the 22 Cans model as it continues forward.
Peter Molyneux's 22cans pitching Populous-esque project on Kickstarter, 'Godus'
Peter Molyneux, like so many of you, pines for the glory days of the studio he co-founded over 15 years ago, Bullfrog Productions. His new studio, 22cans, today launched its first initiative aimed at recreating those glory days, with "Godus" -- a Kickstarter project to "recreate the god game." Of course, Molyneux and Bullfrog were partially responsible for the original invention as well, with PC classic Populous. Like with Populous, you'll control a virtual world and its people, building up (or tearing down) their society as you see fit; it seems the "re-invention" bit comes in the form of multiplayer and mobile play. The nascent studio of game industry vets is hoping for a seven to nine month turnaround on the project, post-Kickstarter (should it pass the £450,000 goal, that is), and it's planned for launch on "PC and mobile devices." In the (hilarious) video 22cans included in its Kickstarter, the company revealed that its first title cum social experiment, Curiosity, already has "about 2 million downloads almost," which we'd certainly call a success. The ever self-aware Molyneux also notes in the video that, "I don't want to promise anything, I just want to deliver the glory of the old days in the new format of today's world." Even when he's trying not to promise something, he just can't help himself, eh? See for yourself below the break.
Peter Molyneux looks to crowdfunding for 'Godus' on iOS
The creator of 1989's seminal "God game," Populous, is returning to the genre on iOS with a new title called Godus. Peter Molyneux and his recently formed indie software house 22 Cans announced the game today by launching a Kickstarter campaign to fund its development. iOS gamers will know 22 Cans as the creator of Curiosity, the massively multiplayer collaborative title we picked as our Daily iPhone App on November 6. Godus will deliver "exciting global co-operation, competition, creation and destruction to a whole new generation," according to its developer. In it, you'll work to build a civilization that worships you and lead them into war against other gods and their followers. 22 Cans is looking to raise £450,000 (US$616,953) in order to complete Godus in the next nine months. Some of the Kickstarter rewards available to backers include a piece of titanium jewelry emblazoned with the game's logo and beset with an actual diamond and an all expenses paid trip to E3 2013 as a guest of Molyneux himself. [Via Joystiq]
