Mere days after launching Curiosity, a quirky, inventive game that tasks players with slowly chipping away at a massive virtual cube in order to discover its contents, famed developer Peter Molyneux has stated that he will only create one final game.
“I’m only going to make one more game, I think,” Molyneux told the bizarrely-named “Beefjack” website. “And that thought — the thought of every ounce of my energy, every ounce of my experience, every mistake that I’ve made in every single game — if I can learn from that, and use that energy to make one game … that’s what I’m trying to do.”
As with Curiosity, while Molyneux is willing to pre-emptively hype his final title, he offers little in the way of solid details. “Could I sit down and describe it to you in full at the moment? No, I can’t,” Molyneux claimed.“But that is my thought. We’re going to make a game, we’re going to learn what it is to make a game in today’s world, and it’s going to be the defining game of my career.”
Unfortunately, there are two problems with what Molyneux is saying here. First, the man is notorious for making impressive promises in the run up to a game’s release that have little to no bearing on the final product. This is why we try to warn readers to have a lot of salt on hand whenever tempted to believe any of Molyneux’s claims. Second, you’ll notice that Molyneux said he’s only making one more “game.” That’s important, as 22cans, the development studio Molyneux is currently aligned with, still has plans to release a number of “experiments” prior to Molyneux’s final game. Curiosity was the first of these experiments, and no one seems to know how many experiments the studio has planned. For all we know, Molyneux could keep churning out projects like Curiosity for the next decade before finally settling in to work on his magnum opus.
Now don’t get us wrong, we hold Molyneux in extremely high regard. Dungeon Keeper remains one of our favorite series of all time, and Populous is an utterly brilliant, engrossing piece of game design. However, we’ve learned over the years not to take anything Molyneux says at face value, at least not until we have concrete evidence of his claims. Thus, until we hear more about this mysterious last game, we won’t be writing his professional eulogy.
On a related note, those of you who have been enjoying Curiosity since its release earlier this week will be happy know that Molyneux and his colleagues at 22cans have created a patch for the game that improves a wide swath of its functionality. Molyneux had expected the title to be a success, but in his mind that meant that mere thousands of players would download the iOS game and slowly chip away at the mysterious cube. Instead, over a million people turned out to take a crack at Molyneux’s box and the game’s initial version simply couldn’t cope all that well. Today’s patch should make connecting to and playing Curiosity far more convenient, as well as extend the game’s necessarily limited shelf-life.
Oh, and Molyneux also claims that at some point today there will be a “huge” announcement regarding 22cans next experiment. We’ll keep you updated as information rolls in, but given that it’s currently 11:30PM in Surrey (the site of the studio’s headquarters), we aren’t holding our breath for anything too impressive.
Update: It turns out that the announcement has been delayed until next week. We are not surprised.
