Peter Molyneux's 22 Cans Launches God Game Kickstarter Project ...
Dan
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Brisbane, Queensland
6864 posts
Having parted ways with Lionhead, founding a new independent studio 22 Cans, and releasing their first "experiment", the peculiar Curiosity, Peter Molyneux and his Guilford, UK-based team have revealed their next hopeful project --a hopeful Kickstarter crowdfunded return to the beloved god game genre titled GODUS (Thanks Nerf Lord).
Populous was created over 22 years ago, and we believe that to date, nothing has come close to emulating its powerfully godlike experience. It’s this experience we aim to reimagine. GODUS blends the power, growth and scope of Populous with the detailed construction and multiplayer excitement of Dungeon Keeper and the intuitive interface and technical innovation of Black & White. The original Populous hailed from the 8-bit era but GODUS will use the most modern technology the world has to offer.
The project page goes on to outline their development philosophies and intentions for the game, featuring a few pieces of concept art, and the pitch video introduces some of the team, including the guys responsible for keeping Molyneux's trademark fanciful ambitions grounded.
The current release target for GODUS on "PC and Mobile devices" is September 2013. More details can be found on Kickstarter.
Just remake Populous. Populous is one of the best games ever made. I'd Kickstart that, especially knowing that he was working on a 256 player version of it anyway
One thing EVERYONE should keep in mind is that Moloneux always promises all these great features..then dumbs them the fuck down or cuts them completely EVERY SINGLE TIME
I dunno, I never heard any hype about Black & White or Populous 3 when I played them, and they were both incredible outstanding games that really pushed the genre. In fact, I've still not seen anything like Black & White.
Molyneux wasn't involved in Populous 3. I thought it was a little boring compared to the first two.
Black and White not hyped?! I have a very different memory of it, and I found the game to be almost staggeringly unenjoyable after it came out - one of my biggest game playing disappointments as someone that has loved almost every other game of Molyneux's.
Oh I mean that I hadn't heard any hype, and so had no expectations. I never played the first two populii, so had nothing to compare it to, just the fun of a shaman walking around yelling ka and sending swarms of bees and volcanoes at things.
It's on its last few days now, the kickstarter is looking to miss its mark (from watching a few of the newer videos, it looks like they've been doing late night overtime to get something demonstratable out - I reckon if they did it again with more to show next time, they'd have better luck).
Currently only projected to fall short by £80,000 , which you'd think wouldn't be hard for Moly and friends to dig up for last minute pledging. Most projects get a big uptick in the last few days anyway, esp if they're cutting it fine, so I'd say it's more likely to make it than not.
Anyone who gives Peter Molyneux is just exacerbating the problem; you're just enabling his madness and setting yourself up for disappointment.
Anecdotes I've heard seem to suggest that the reason the Molyneux games in the Bullfrog days were good were because he was in partnership with other people who would keep him grounded in reality, and shoot down his crazy/stupid ideas. When it came to Lionhead though, there was nobody really in a position of authority to perform that role, and I nothing seems to suggest his new company is any different =\
Black and White is one of the only games I've bought that I genuinely regretted paying money for
Agreed, was so fucking amped for itl.. 10 minutes in... "WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT, WHAT CANT I.... WELL I NEVER" Since that game anything that was created by Molyneux is on a complete media black out.. That way on release I can semi enjoy it.
Worked for the Fable games, not the greatest series but enjoyable enough to play. I'm almost certain that if i read anything about it prior to release I would of probably cried all the time.
Black & White was meant to have things like rocks being smoothed when rolled in a valley due to physics right? I can see how people would be disappointed if expecting that, but fuck it was amazing for what it was (a hand driven UI, splitting and throwing around rocks and spells and villagers, building on decent fully explorable 3D terrain, worker AI that was very good at automating RTS resource gathering etc, a creature which learned to copy player actions with reinforcement teaching, etc).
He hasn't really hyped any features for this (I was paying attention, since he's infamous for it :P), basically just said "we're making a god game, for multiple devices, will be influenced by our old ones". Considering that I liked his previous work when going in with no expectations, I have reason to be optimistic that they'll put together something worth the cheap ticket. ;)
Spore was a major disappointment, but was Will Wright wasn't it? (though I enjoyed the cell and space stages)
Oh yeh, not saying that old mate Moly had anything to do with it, just putting any disappointment I had with B&W into perspective. It wasn't quite the game I expected, but it was no Sporetastrophe.
Always strikes me as odd that people shit on Molyneux for B&W (which wasn't terrible) but give Maxis a pass for Spore which was a pile of shit, and hyped a couple of orders of magnitude above B&W levels imo. Spore is why I won't be pre-ordering the new Sim City game, I can't believe anything those cunts say anymore.
Yeah they might have known they would have trouble with connecting with the audience when the hype was for a super awesome 'do-anything!' game, yet the delivery was three or four distinctly separate games smooshed together. I had a little bit of fun in each small game (except the last one), but overall the experience was a bit dull and had zero replayability for me.
The Kickstarter made it, presumably they put some money into it but oh well. So much email spam, which was strangely well formatted and readable, maybe they just convinced the backers to annoy everybody who they could about it.
One of the stretch goals is to hire the writer of Black & White, Fable, Pop 3, etc. I hate to be... cruel... but the writing in those games was pretty awful I thought... Well, maybe it was more a matter of execution. Pop 3 barely even had a story, though the minimal bit which it did have was fun.
Fable 1 however, was the worst hero's journey story implementation ever. :/
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