Peter Moylneux’s 22Cans game studio today released a mobile game that can be considered more social experiment than game.
Curiosity is a game about tapping a giant cube. The tapping serves to chip away at the cube and reveal the secrets buried inside. There are billions of “cubelets” to chip off the cube, however, so everyone’s collective taps count toward the destruction of the one cube. The catch is that there is something in the middle of the cube that 22Cans describes as “life-changingly amazing,” but only the first person to reach the center will get to see it.
The “game” is actually a social experiment. Players can earn coins for chipping away at the cube and then spend the coins on “new destructive and playful tools” to chip away at the cube faster. Tools include firecrackers, bombs, and chisels. Of course, you can also use real money to purchase coins. What that means is that the player who actually makes it to the center is likely to have paid real money for the amazing secret.
Other than tapping the screen, there’s not much to the app, though it does feature some soothing music to tap along with. The developers openly admit that simply tapping on the cube can get addicting. In the app description on Google Play and the Apple App Store, 22Cans encourages players to create text and pictures by chipping the cube, so, of course, some minor vandalism involving strong language and crude pictures has begun.
A beta test with 52 testers back in September managed to destroy 3,006,634 cubelets, averaging 14,455 cubelets destroyed per player, per day. If you’re set on becoming one of the cube tappers, you should know that multi-touch is useful and allows players to destroy multiple cubelets at a time.