Peter Molyneux, the man behind titles such as Black & White and Fable, has announced a new title The Trial at the Fun and Serious Game Festival.
In an interview with El País, Mr Molyenux described his new game as an experience never seen before, bound to captivate us in just five seconds: ‘It can be understood at a glance, and it entertains the idea of communication beyond words, by means of music, art, and so on.An ambitious statement. But hold on, is he not still working on Godus? The game that he managed to get kickstarted back in 2012?
According to Mr Molyneux, The Trial will set right the aspects that went wrong with Godus, his latest project under the independent studio 22Cans. The Kickstarter-funded god simulation game ‘lacked in narrative, progress and reward.’Uh oh.
The news does not get any better. Designer Konrad Naszynski, who was brought on recently, has been very blunt about the state of Godus:
Godus is rather confused right now, it plays like an ongoing persistent game without real end point and yet it's divided up into discrete levels. This is one of the big decisions we will need to make in the next couple of weeks. And again realistically I'm having to ask myself, "how can we turn what Godus is right now into a good complete experience" rather than "how can we deliver on the kickstarter pitch goals". We are in the process of re-evaluating the 'big picture' direction of and end goal of Godus. It's not an easy or straightforward task, but I will let you know when I can.The kickstarter dilemma is something that Peter addressed back in December calling it 'a destructive force that has damaged Godus' by overpromising, which may be the irony of ironies for Peter. So far, many of the kickstarter goals have not surfaced. His Curiosity project, another game under his wing, had involved Godus and the winner is apparently hanging dry at the moment.
As for the game itself, the reviews on Steam have been mostly negative, the most common complaint being the lack of promised features and plain frustration at the development cycle.
Konrad though has hopes:
Quite frankly it's been exhausting, but I'm starting to feel cautiously optimistic...Konrad has been having to deal with a lot of bureaucratic red tape from his confessions and his frustrations are understandable especially when you consider he was there from the alpha and has been desperately trying to get into a position of influence within the Godus development team to make a difference. Whether he can influence the development enough to improve Godus substantially remains to be seen.There's things I can't talk about yet, but there are indications we will have more resources available in the next couple of months, perhaps as early as next sprint.
His frustration though is shared by many as Godus raised over $800,000 and its backers are still waiting for their promised game. The fact that Peter is moving on and announcing a new one can only lead to further frustration and even anger.
Recently, he warned Microsoft about overpromising on the HoloLens. What is the saying? The pot calling the kettle...
