Peter Molyneux Debuts New God Game, Masters Of Albion

Game designer Peter Molyneux has returned to video games, and debuted his next project during Gamescom Opening Night Live. The new project, called Masters of Albion, goes back to Molyneux’s roots in god games, with a few new twists.

The brief gameplay demonstration showed the familiar disembodied hand floating over a small medieval-looking village. Molyneux said that you can manage loads of details in your community, right down to what they eat. You can even make them eat rats, if you’re so inclined.

But preparing your village with adequate defense is important because at night, you’re attacked by monsters. At that point you can either switch to an over-the-shoulder third-person perspective and fight directly as one of your town’s champions, or rain down divine fury on the attacking creatures–you can also switch between the two perspectives mid-gameplay. Molyneux showed his champion getting wiped out, and then went back to the drawing board the next day to train them up in the village.

Masters of Albion is coming from Molyneux’s studio 22cans. It’s available to wishlist on Steam, but no release date has been set.

Molyneux has been in games development for decades, since the days of Atari, and was instrumental in creating the Fable series, as well as strategy and god games like Dungeon Keeper and Black & White. In the process he gained a reputation for bold promises about the flexibility of his games. After his studio, Lionhead, was acquired by Microsoft, he stayed with Lionhead for six years before leaving to found 22cans.

During his stage appearance, Molyneux joked about his previous projects, asking, “What the hell was I doing?” regarding his efforts at mobile development. He said that pushed him to go back “home” to PC and console, so for Masters of Albion, he’s looked back at Dungeon Keeper, Black & White, and Fable for ideas of what he’d like to push further. He also mentioned he needed to reassemble some of the old team, so he brought back developers from some of those older games to make this one.

For more from Gamescom, check out all the biggest Opening Night Live announcements.