Campfire [PS2/XBOX – Cancelled]

Campfire: Become Your Nightmare is a cancelled “reverse survival horror” that was in development in 2003 by Daydream Software, for the original Xbox and Playstation 2. The project was going to be an open ended action game, in which the player would had take the role of a serial killer, to massacre tourists and youngsters during their holydays in the woods. As we can read in the official press release:

What if you were the hunter instead of the hunted? What if your sole purpose in life was to cause misery, death, and pain to anyone and anything you encountered? Now you have your chance. So begins Daydream Software’s brutal “reverse survival horror” game, Campfire. Based on contemporary slasher flicks, Campfire allows players to choose from four different serial killers (Vincent Voucher, Mac Douglas, Louis Winterstorm, and Mannie the Clown) so that they may use them to wreck havoc on the unsuspecting populace of an out of the way campground.

Campfire vanished without any official announcement, but it’s possible that Daydream never found a publisher interested in the project.

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MDK2 [PC Dreamcast – Beta / Concept]

MDK2 is an action game developed by BioWare, as a sequel to the original MDK developed by Shiny Entertainment and released in 1997 by Interplay. MDK2 was originally released for the Dreamcast and PC in 2000, but it was later revised and re-released for the PlayStation 2 as MDK2: Armageddon. [Info from Wikipedia]

Some of the early screenshots released for this project show a beta build 20% complete.  The character models seem to be the same, though the places in these pictures do not exist in the final product. Some of them are similar to an area at the start of the game , so maybe it was an early version of that stage.

The the lightning looks extremely weird especially on the character model. The HUD is also different.

Finally, the lack of any screenshots of the other two characters leads us to believe that they had either not been implemented yet or that the game wasn’t going to include them.

If you can notice more differences in these beta screens and artworks, please let us know!

Thanks to F2bnp for the contribution!

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Allegiance (Team 17) [Cancelled – Playstation, Saturn, 3DO]

Allegiance is a cancelled FPS / action game that was in development by Team17 in 1995 / 1996, rumored to be planned for the Playstation, Saturn and 3DO.  According to Spong, it seems that the game was to feature a female lead character, Kay Brogan. Despite several level meshes being completed the game was canned due to the failure of the 3D engine to be developed in time.

In the aftermath of Tomb Raider some Team 17 staff tried to convert Allegiance into a Tomb Raider style game, but as the team had a reputation of original games, they decided not to follow this derivative route.

Thanks to Dream17 we can read a comment  about Allegiance that Martyn Brown (Team17 co-founder) posted on his blog on March 30th, 2007.

A spy thriller that got not much further than some crackers budget FMV when again the company was knee deep in Worms focus elsewhere. I shudder to think how it all happened, really. The idea was sound, it just suffered from a total disregard of planning, design and implementation.

Celine was able to find a screenshot of this game in Cd Consoles magazine issue #7, and another scan is from Play Magazine issue #2. Thanks to Unclejun for the help with the video! Thanks to Andrew for the other scans  Play Issue #1 (UK magazine)!

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The Witcher Outcast [PC – Cancelled]

The Witcher is RPG for the PC developed by CD Projekt RED STUDIO and originally  released in 2007. The game tells the story of Geralt of Rivia, who at the opening of the game is tasked to cure the daughter of King Foltest of a curse which causes her to transform into a feral monster. [Info from Wikipedia]

The Witcher Outcast was a planned add-on that was in development by roXidy, a Canadian group which previously created the Neverwinter Nights: Wyvern Crown of Cormyr premium module for BioWare.

Outcast was going to be released as DLC in most countries and have a disc release in some countries, like Poland and Russia. It was in development from late 2007 until around mid-2008, when it was canceled by CD Projekt.

The draft of the story for this add-on can be read below:

The story takes place in the early part of Geralt’s life, before he is established as a Witcher, during the reign of King Videmont of Aedirn (around 1190). It takes place in the Skellige Isles off the west coast, on an island ruled by jarl Harald. Many years ago, a monster attacked Harald’s pregnant wife Morganna. In return, Harald went out to slay the monster, with the help of the gnome Shiltzen. As payment, Shiltzen demanded Harald’s firstborn, but when Morganna gave birth, she bore twins. Seeing that the second child was monstrous, Harald gave that child to Shiltzen instead of the firstborn Astrid.

The full design doc can be downloaded from GameBanshee!

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Stackers (Stackpack) [GameCube, PC – Prototype]

Stackers / Stackpack is an unreleased platform / puzzle game that was in development by Santa Cruz Games for the GameCube and PC. This project was probably an evolution of their Pickles prototype, in which the player had to stack various characters on each other, to resolve the levels. The Pickles demo was shown at the Game Connection 2006 as wrote in an article published on Gamasutra by Lost Level’s Frank Cifaldi, but sadly Stackers and Pickles remained only tech demos, as Santa Cruz Games was not able to put more time and money into them.

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