Peter Molyneux’s making a new game, teases something that’s “never been seen in a game before”

Peter Molyneux, the veteran game developer behind Dungeon Keeper, Black & White and Fable, has revealed that he’s currently working on a new game at his 22Cans studio in Farnborough.

Speaking to Gamereactor, Molyneux detailed an as-yet unnamed release for PC and consoles that’s "more like a kind of Fable, Black and White, Dungeon Keeper kind of experience". To gamers of a certain age, hearing that feels like having your favourite blanket wrapped around you. For now, it’s ample grounds for excitement about the project.

It’s a big moment not just for god game fans, but for Molyneux himself. His track record when it comes to revealing games has been spotty, to put it charitably, and some corners of the industry have chastised him for making promises that the final game failed to deliver.

The starkest example came when Curiosity: What’s Inside the Cube? released for smartphones in 2012. During the build-up, Molyneux detailed a life-changing prize for the player who finally got to the centre of the titular cube. When Edinburgh resident Bryan Henderson did just that in 2013, he unlocked a prize video, a special title within 22Can’s next game, Godus, and a small share of that game’s profits. However the latter hadn’t been established even years after Henderson’s accomplishment.

It matters, then, what you do or don’t say about a game on announcement. Particularly if you’re Peter Molyneux. An issue he addressed directly as he spoke to Gamereactor: "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".

Probably wise.

The old showman instinct hasn’t been totally suppressed, though. Here’s what he has to say about what makes the game unique: "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.”

Keep spinning us those yarns, Peter. The game’s industry’s all the more exciting for them.