Famed British game developer Peter Molyneux, whose resume includes such influential and high-profile titles as Populous, Dungeon Keeper, Black & White, and Fable, is in attendance at the Fun & Serious Game Festival in Bilbao, Spain, where he has announced an all-new project called The Trail. It will be a social game for phones and tablets unrelated to Godus, his other game currently in beta at his indie studio, 22cans.
Molyneux has kept tight-lipped about details, but in true Molyneux fashion, he's hyping it up as the next greatest thing, able to capture our attention 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. The problem with social media is that we communicate too much. If you and I, who are having a conversation right now, could only say ten words to each other, we'd feel frustrated, with lots of things to say that we can't utter. But, on the other hand, we’d make every effort to make those ten words sound as meaningful as possible.
He also says the The Trail will attempt to address the shortcomings of Godus, which he feels "lacked in narrative, progress and reward." This is a rather amusing claim, as we've heard it all before. Seemingly with every single game he has designed in the past decade, he'd slag off the previous effort for not truly realizing his vision, only to raise the latest one as being all that and a bag of chips. Molyneux is a fountain of hype and empty promises — my money is on The Trail's not meeting a single one of his proposed goals.
