Masters of Albion is an nearly nostalgically cute and sassy imaginative and prescient of the god sport style that veteran sport designer Peter Molyneux made his title in. It brings within the components of a city-builder and an exploration-focused action-RPG. I obtained an early have a look at the sport by watching Molyneux play for about 45 minutes and located it, actually, fairly refreshing—regardless of no matter advertising and marketing phrases would possibly encompass this sport to date, it appeared just like the workforce at 22cans is simply making a sport that they suppose may be enjoyable to play. It is an oddly refreshing method for a midsize improvement workforce in 2026, when each different sport preview looks like it’s making an attempt as laborious as it may possibly to blow your socks off.
In Masters of Albion, you are a man who’s now a god—which as everyone knows means you turn out to be a large floating disembodied hand with magic powers. Your job is to finish the duties that pop up for you every day, then survive the wave of enemies that tries to tear down what you’ve got constructed every evening. That is all within the service of defending the land of Albion, the place extra industrial know-how has been developed however the historic magic of Outdated Albion remains to be floating round. In a different way, of course, than your large hand is floating round.
To this point so easy. To be frank, the perfect half of Masters of Albion that I noticed was that it was a world unapologetically working on online game logic. That implies that it’s fairly absurd, the NPCs are impolite regardless that you are a god that may homicide them, and the cool heroes you management are whole meatheads that in all probability would not succeed with out you pulling the strings. That is a world the place you turn out to be a god and the very first thing these individuals want from you is to open a profitable pie manufacturing facility as a result of their financial system is dying and in addition they’re very hungry. May you do weapons subsequent after which possibly garments? As a result of they’re additionally defenseless in opposition to all these animate skeletons and wearing rags.
In order that’s one large half of Masters of Albion: the city administration. There are sources utilized in manufacturing chains that you simply use to satisfy contracts and earn money—extra on that later. Like you would possibly anticipate, there are buildings that absorb one useful resource, say iron ore, and output one other, like smelted iron. There’s then one other constructing that makes the iron bars into swords and issues. You are in a position to design and assemble each constructing from various elements—snapping them collectively like little plastic bricks. You’ll be able to tweak roofs and doorways however you may also add a bed room to your bakery, for instance, so the man who works there does not waste time on journey to and from his job. That, nevertheless, would have ethical implications for what variety of god you’re, hinted the 22cans workforce.
It is the step past that customization that makes issues fascinating. It’s also possible to design your individual buildings to spec. Having each a smelter and a manufacturing facility, stated Molyneux, was in all probability a bit inefficient. “I’ll say no. I am gonna make this constructing a smelter and a manufacturing facility,” he stated as—utilizing nothing greater than mouse controls—he quickly broke a manufacturing facility into its element blocks and slapped them onto the close by smelter constructing.
“You could possibly mix all of the buildings into one, and it may possibly look one thing like Howl’s Shifting Citadel. A loopy design,” he stated. Although that will positively include penalties to its general effectivity and manufacturing pace, the builders later famous, hinting that it was one more half of what variety of god you’re.
You additionally design the stuff produced in your factories. When a peasant despatched up an order for 9 units of “primary meals” that was “all meat, no starch,” the participant opened up the manufacturing facility interface and mixed the components they’d unlocked to try to meet that demand. Whereas it might be executed with automated techniques, in case you cared to you had been ready to decide on simply precisely what went into your—in Molyneux’s case—rooster, rat, and soup inventory pies.
“Trigger it says all meat and, , rat is meat,” he stated, dragging the rat in and rising the sale value of the pies by a easy £9.56. Which, we had been assured, issues.
The purpose of all that city administration and designing stuff is to make individuals happier, or not less than to satisfy the requests and contracts they put up and earn money. Cash is what turns the wheels of Masters of Albion. There’s fairly a extra detailed financial system than you’ll guess, with little market forces that change over time and the way a lot issues price to provide based mostly on the components you add to them. Each single constructing and tech tree innovation and defensive tower and new weapon to your heroes wants cash, and within the case of the tech tree particularly, wants the favors you earn from finishing contracts or wiping out monsters.
So far as what the tech tree unlocks? I noticed stuff as concrete as new weapons or new buildings or elevated wheat manufacturing, however I additionally noticed issues like making fancy garments for everybody, throwing lightning blasts, or simply making impolite gestures together with your large hand. All of that, stated Molyneux, was within the service of making an attempt to cater to individuals’s various playstyles.
Which works into the opposite large elements of Masters of Albion. Whereas a lot of the sport is clearly about customizing and controlling how your little world of Albion appears to be like and capabilities, it certain appeared like exploring the world, increasing your affect in it, and defeating your enemies was simply as large a half of the meant sport.
“It is a god sport, a god sport that permits you to play at any tempo that you really want, if you wish to feast your self on issues you possibly can, if you wish to unlock tech bushes you possibly can, if you wish to exit questing you possibly can, if you wish to concentrate on fight you possibly can,” stated Molyneux.
Throughout the daytime you’ve got obtained duties to finish, and lots of of these require that you simply activate magical beacons to unfold your godly affect to new elements of Albion. To do this you have to take direct management of your followers, particularly the heroes, and have them discover the world past your borders to seek out and activate these towers. The hero I noticed was a beefy fighter utilizing melee weapons—the statistics and elegance of which had been inbuilt a personalized manufacturing facility interface identical to making pies—and took these weapons out into the world to battle enemies in a pretty easy action-RPG model, although Molyneux famous they had been nonetheless refining the third-person fight in the intervening time.
The world to discover did appear pretty giant, with puzzles that took you out and in of controlling a hero in an effort to use your large hand to do stuff like reconstruct the beacon towers. There have been additionally quests to get from native inhabitants that went past the contract requests—, rescue my husband somewhat than bake me ten pies. The world is clearly meant to be fairly giant, with expansive areas to discover each above and under—I noticed a few mine and cave entrances scattered round however Molyneux by no means went down them. The map does make it look giant, not astounding-stunning-biggest-open-world-ever giant, however of a measurement that if it is crammed with bespoke stuff in every single place, it’s going to fulfill and even reward that want to discover the nooks and crannies.
As soon as you’ve got fulfilled your duties for the day—stuff like clearing a mine area of bandits so you will get an previous smelter again on line and home staff close to it—you proceed to the evening section. The nights are mainly tower protection fight. You are notified the place enemies will spawn to assault your cities. You’ll be able to then set your heroes to defend particular areas as a tower in and of themselves, which they do routinely or below your management, and also you additionally construct customizable partitions or towers with ballistas and cannons and issues as defenses. Because the enemies come you possibly can fortunately mow them down with god powers, throwing stuff like streams of lightning, however you may also, in true god sport model, simply choose up stuff together with your large floating hand to drop on individuals. Boulders appeared notably efficient at squashing skeletons, and there have been a few suspiciously harmful wanting crimson barrels positioned across the countryside too.
Masters of Albion clearly has a lot happening. That is a sport made out of minigames, and whether or not or not it is a good sport general will in all probability come down as to whether or not all these completely different elements turn out to be easy enjoyable when stitched and glued and welded collectively into one entire. It’s going to actually rely upon whether or not these pretty easy techniques may be made satisfying to play—is the fight or city administration or open world enjoyable regardless that it is less complicated than a complete specialised sport based mostly on that concept?
We cannot know till we see extra, however it appears clear that the workforce at 22cans is making a sport that sounds enjoyable to them. A sport they’d need to play in their very own distinctive kinds. That is often a good register sport improvement. There was a lot extra video games popping out that appeared like this one: A funds, however not a big funds. A imaginative and prescient, however not a big imaginative and prescient. Fun, however not promising to revolutionize the world. Whether or not or not individuals nonetheless need that sort of sport stays to be seen, however there’s all the time hope. And it’s good to see Molyneux again on the helm of a god sport as soon as once more.