LittleBigPlanet offers one of the coziest aesthetics in all of gaming, with adorable knitted Sackboys running around as Stephen Fry encourages you to to embrace the creative spirit that binds humanity together. It might come as some surprise, then, to learn that the game's original creative director, Mark Healey, finds the modern cozy gaming trend pretty dull.
"There's a lot of people that like cozy games – I think they became really popular during COVID, actually – but I find them incredibly boring," Healey explained in an interview with The Game Business. "I can understand the appeal of them, but I'm like, it's so much nicer if you just mix in a bit of extreme violence as well, just to sort of balance it out a little bit."
That nod to violence doesn't come entirely out of nowhere, as the contrast between coziness and chaos is at the heart of Masters of Albion, the Peter Molyneux-led god game that Healey's now working on. Healey and Molyneux worked together for years on everything from Dungeon Keeper to Black and White to Fable, and the devs haven't shied away from its similarities to titles from Lionhead's legendary catalogue.
"The way I would describe the game, in the shortest possible way, is it's cozy by day and chaos by night, basically," Healey added. Masters of Albion has you building a village during the daylight, and when darkness falls, you defend the town from various monsters. Healey said that contrast is what "excited" him about the project in the first place.
"Just that, wanting to try and accentuate that contrast," he said. "Let's get people into a nice sense of coziness during the day – they're building their products. And then at night, rip them to pieces – zombies."
"The great thing about that contrast," Molyneux himself added, "is you can spend as long as you like getting ready for that chaos at night, and in any way you like, and that means that even if you are a cozy player I think you'd enjoy the excitement of the night, as well."
We'll see how Masters of Albion ultimately delivers on that aim when it hits early access on April 22. Molyneux developed a reputation for overpromising and underdelivering going back to Black and White and Fable, but most of his games remained good enough to develop big followings regardless. The same can't be said of his modern projects – but hopefully the cozy chaos of Masters of Albion can put things back on track.
