Peter Molyneux, perhaps best known for his work onFable,Black & White,Dungeon Keeper, andGodus, stepped back into the spotlight during Gamescom 2024’s Opening Night Live to reveal his studio’s new game,Masters of Albion.
The game is an homage to everything Molyneux has ever worked on. With the quirky fantasy-meets-history feel of theFableseries crossed with the top-down view and god-like powers bestowed on players from theDungeon Keepergames. In it, you’re tasked with building up a town during the day, deciding everything from where the citizens work and live, to exactly what kind of sandwich they eat. At night, though, you must protect the town from the horrors of Albion, and that’s where things get interesting.
Control it all from the top to the bottom
As you can see in the very first trailer forMasters of Albion, it’s very much a strategy simulation game for the most part. The day is spent moving people around to where you think they’ll fit best in the town, creating food, weapons, armor, and allegedly literally anything you want. That level of control could keep you busy for endless hours, but night will interfere.
At night, all sorts of monsters emerge from the wilderness of Albion to attack your town. This is when your hero steps up to defend the buildings and people you’ve been working hard with all day. The trailer shows how you’ll be able to directly control this hero and any NPC you desire, so you can fight for your town and presumably become a citizen to more efficiently aid it in other ways.
The level of depth Molyneux promises inMaster of Albionis pretty impressive. He says you’ll even be able to define the types of food everyone eats on a daily basis and make silly weapons such as bread swords if that’s what you want to spend your time doing.
However, Molyneux has madebig promises before with games likeGodusand then failed to follow through on them. He says he’s got many of the old crew who worked with him on games such asDungeon Keeperback in the day together for 22cans on this project. This should instill confidence inMasters of Albion, but I think it’s healthy to take everything shown here with a big pinch of salt until we’ve seen some more gameplay further down the line.
