"Curious" is a pretty good word to describe Peter Molyneux. So it's fitting that the first game announced by the founder of indie studio 22Cans is called Curiosity.
The game is planned to be an MMO with, naturally, an eccentric conceit: in a virtual room, a large, black cube will be tapped by players, who will be able to see the cracks occur simultaneously. In a way, the game is a kind of race: only the last player to crack the cube open will be able to see what it contains.
If that wasn't enough, the second stage, involving DLC, will allow players to upgrade their chisels by buying virtual equipment with real money. Iron chisels, for instance, will cost 59p. Diamond chisels, however, will cost £50,000.
Someone, somewhere, might just be curious enough to buy it.
In defense of this pricey DLC stage, Molyneux said, "This is not a money-making exercise; it is a test about the psychology of monetisation. There’s only one black cube in the whole world, and everybody who’s tapping and chipping and sculpting away at this cube is trying to find out what is in the middle. I’m not going to tell anyone.”
The game is promised to be able to support up to a million players and is set for release on August 22nd on iOS, Android and PC.
Image: Twitter