During last night’s Gamescom Opening Night Live, veteran developer Peter Molyneux took the stage to officially unveil his latest project, a game of gods called Masters of Albion. While there’s a lot about the game’s design that’s reminiscent of the classic Fable, it seems the game also bears some similarities to Molyneux’s ill-fated blockchain game Legacy.
For a quick background, Legacy was announced in 2021 by Molyneux and his company 22cans, billed as a blockchain-based business simulation game where players could use cryptocurrency to purchase NFT plots, which, to paraphrase Grandpa Simpson, was a fad at the time. The game was released late last year, and despite the failure of the NFT bubble it was designed to capitalize on, the game is still going strong.
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Went into Master of Albion last night, and while it doesn’t appear to have any actual blockchain or web3 mechanics at the moment based on what was shown, it does look to incorporate some similar systems and mechanics to Master of Albion in terms of what you do during the day.
In this section of the MoA, Molnueux said in the reveal, “You’ll be tasked with building a town, acquiring resources, and making money.” Meanwhile, Legacy’s description notes that it requires players to “design and manufacture your own products, sell and trade them on the market, and maximize your profits.”
If you look at the product-making section of Legacy, and then look at the way “design and build products” are done in Masters of Albion–this is the part that lets you feed rats and make bread swords–you’ll see that there’s a similar system/UI, supported by a circular base surrounded by things to add. Both games focus on managing workers as they produce goods from a top-down perspective, which requires a lot of mouse-clicking and drag-and-dropping, and you unlock upgrades/abilities as you play.
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The buildings you construct appear to be divided into similar single-story sections, suitable for stacking together via an “innovative block system.” The pieces of paper used to indicate the progress of resource orders in Masters of Albion also appear to serve the same function as the signs in Legacy that indicate the progress of resource creation.
All that said, if these elements do draw inspiration from Legacy, then there’s nothing wrong with that on the surface, as reworking established building blocks is a common occurrence with many games, especially when it comes to saving time and resources during development.
Additionally, Master of Albion lets you take direct control of a character to smash some undead creatures and explore the open world, which looks to help the Fable-esque medieval art style and narrative elements set it apart from the cartoonish capitalism that drove Legacy’s gameplay.
Masters of Albion will be coming to PC and consoles, with Molyneux joining Fable veterans such as Russell Shaw, Iain Wright and Mark Healey on the self-funded project.
