Curiouser and Curiouser

Have you played Curiosity yet?

If you have an Android or iDevice I really must insist that you do. Now that the servers have settled down it’s become something really quite special.

For those of you who don’t know what it is, Curiosity is the first title from 22cans, the studio that Peter Molyneux founded after he left Lionhead. That should tell you something in itself. It is part social experiment in cooperation and compulsion, part experiment in game mechanics. There’s a cube. There’s something inside it. Everyone can see the cube and everyone can chip away at it, but only one person sees what’s inside. And what’s inside is something secret, yet something that is supposed to be incredible. Will the person who gets to the centre of the cube keep it for his or herself, or will they share it with the rest of the world? Will we ever get to the centre of the cube? It’s a massive job. Maybe the experiment is a way to find out how long something will hold the world’s attention before the world gives up. You can keep guessing about what the real experiment is and what’s in the centre. The only man who knows for sure is Peter Molyneux and he’s not telling.

What is certain about Curiosity is that it’s bloody addictive. You can easily sit there tapping away for hours and not notice the time pass. You find yourself making patterns as you painstakingly expose the surface below, trying to piece together the image underneath the layer that may or may not be an image at all, or seeing how quickly you can clear a screen or even just switching off and tapping mindlessly away. Everyone I know who has played it gets something slightly different out of it for themselves. They’ve been drawing pictures, writing messages along the cube’s surfaces and even censoring some of the more lewd ones out there.

During my reverie, I’ve noticed that Curiosity is just about the purest game I have ever played. Look at it like this. Almost every game from the dawn of the electronic age, from Space Invaders to Tetris to Mario 64 right up to Call of Duty essentially boils down to one thing. Making stuff go away. Clicking on things until they disappear. Shoot the aliens or the terrorists, sling Bowser into the lava or clear those blocks. Make the things go away to keep playing.

Curiosity is the ultimate distillation of that line of play. It strips away the distracting graphics, giving you nothing but a cube. It takes away the peril, and gives you peace to work in. It takes away the enemies and gives you surfaces to clear. It takes away the weapons, rather than blowing shit up, you’re left with nothing but your finger to tap cubelets and make them disappear. Rather than move, you spin the cube and zoom in and out. The score becomes coins found under the surface. They’re there to be spent almost exclusively on clearing cubelets from the layer the world is currently working on. You get the feeling that the soothing music is only playing because there’s such a thing as going too far.

What you are left with is the cube, a goal and a simple means to attain said goal. And amazingly, that’s enough. I’m happy to spend time clearing the cube knowing that my chance of seeing inside is miniscule. I’ll do my bit and hope to high heaven that the person who does is the generous type. Perhaps one of the kind of people that share their whole life over the social media.

Here’s hoping.

Maybe that statement says something about me. Maybe it’s what Mr Molyneux wants all along. Maybe the cube is intended as a mirror from which we learn something about ourselves. Maybe I’m just talking pretentious rubbish. There has been a lot of reaction to Curiosity, and amongst all the variation, quite a significant number of articles contain a phrase along the lines of, “you must play this.”

And doesn’t that make you a little bit curious?