22Cans hopes Curiosity will pique curiosity (pictures)
The debut "experiment" from Peter Molyneux's startup 22Cans may seem crude, but it's got enough to capture hundreds of thousands of people's interest. Here's a look at the game.
Curiosity: First look
The first layer of Curiosity's cube was black; tapping its millions of blocks away revealed the layer beneath.
First crack at a Curiosity corner
If you're around at just the right moment, when one layer of cublets is demolished, you can get first crack at the corner of the next layer.
Curiosity canvas
Artwork such as this heart often doesn't last long as others tap away the cubelets.
Peter Molyneux explains
Peter Molyneux explains 22Cans' upcoming game, Godus.
Curiosity edge detection
Some Curiosity layers reveal photos or other imagery beneath. This view shows stripes of shattered cubelets that were demolished to find the boundary between darker and lighter areas -- a kind of painstakingly slow edge detection algorithm. Eventually the edge was revealed to be part of the word "domino."
Cubelet clearance
One strategy for rapidly clearing cubelets in Curiosity involves buying an iron chisel for 110,000 gold coins then tapping with multiple fingers in a sweeping pattern down across screen after screen.
Curiosity graffiti
Curiosity's cube is a blank slate on which people can offer graffiti, artwork, and opinions for thousands of others to see.
Curiosity promos Godus
22Cans used the message crawling across the Curiosity cube to promote its Kickstarter-funded Godus game.
22Cans mockup
A mockup of the terrain of 22Cans' Godus game due to arrive in September 2013. It's a god game, and players will be able to flick tornadoes across the landscape with a mouse movement or touch-screen swipe. 22Cans took advantage of the success of Curiosity -- and the fact that it could show text on Curiosity's cube -- to promote Kickstarter funding of Godus.
Molyneux early days: Populous
Peter Molyneux's first "god game" was Populous, which sold 5 million copies after it debuted in the late 1980s. It let players flatten out land so settlers would expand in a competition with another colony run by another deity.
Molyneux's Dungeon Keeper
Dungeon Keeper from game designer Peter Molyneux let players protect a dungeon from assaults from heroes, an inversion of the usual protogonist-antagonist order.
Molyneux's Black and White god game
Black and White, another god game from Peter Molyneux, showed steadily improving graphics. In the game, the player could control a hand of god that could for example break boulders down into rocks that could be used as weapons.
Text cube
Sometimes 22Cans puts text on Curiosity's cubes.
Uncovering photos
People like to uncover the interesting parts of photos once they're discovered on the face of the cube.
Messages on tap
Curiosity lets people tap little "cubelets" to make them disappear. Writing messages is one motivation to keep on tapping at the 64 billion cubelets.
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