Beta + Cancelled RTS Video Games - Page 3 of 19

MageLords is a cancelled strategy game that was in development by Kinesoft around 1999 – 2000, planned to be released on PC. Its main features would have been a mix of RTS and empire-building gameplay, boosting epic battles with a hundred of 3D characters on-screen, something quite impressive for its time.

More details on what MageLords could have offered can be found in previews published by IGN and Gamespot:

“The world of MageLords was first ruled by a civilization known as Arcan, which was made up of six distinct clans. Each clan had a representative in Arcan’s ruling council, which governed all aspects of society. Over time, the council focused its efforts on harnessing the power of the magic that permeated its world. Each member of the council selected one of the six magical disciplines to study: good, evil, order, chaos, nature, and the nexus. The council adopted the title of MageLords and soon became distrustful of one another.”
“You play as a MageLord who remotely governs an empire and magically controls armies from afar. On the empire level you’ll need to extend your control to new provinces and build cities to increase the mana, gold, and food levels so you can build more powerful armies and cast more impressive spells to indirectly affect tactical battles.”
“MageLord’s 3D battlefield can engage up to 100 individual figures, from medieval human troops to super-sized giants and nasty demons. Figures are mainly controlled in unit formations, which depending on the figure’s size and strength, can include from one to ten individuals.”
“The game features a wide variety of creatures, including dragons, minotaurs, zombies, basilisks, skeleton warriors, death knights, hellhounds, and wraiths. While many creatures belong to one of the six main races in the game, others are neutral. Neutral creatures can exist in the world due to the work of the ancient evil force, the Asthorra, or they can merely be random wandering monsters.”

Thanks to Kinsie for the contribution!

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Others, PC / MAC

Kaiju (DigiFX Interactive) [Cancelled – PC, Mac]

monokoma

21-08-2021

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Kaiju is a cancelled real-time strategy game that was in development by DigiFX Interactive around 1996 / 1997, planned to be released on PC and Mac. Players could choose between 2 factions: kaijus (those giant monsters from classic Japanese movies) and humans. Depending on which faction you would play as your objective would be to protect or destroy cities.

As we can read from their official press-release:

“The city is under attack! Giant monsters breathing fire are leveling every building in sight. It is up to you to mobilize your forces and develop new technologies in order to stop these giant creatures, or choose to command a cadre’ of crazed dinosaurs, giant lizards, sea monsters, radioactive space monsters, “King Congo” (the biggest ape you ever saw) and other huge destructive creatures whose sole purpose is to obliterate mankind! No this isn’t just a “kill the bad guy” strategy game…it’s total destruction!
KAIJU is a Windows 95 and Macintosh “real time” strategy game with an entirely new twist! KAIJU contains one of the most unique and highly playable battle and economic systems in existence. Players can choose either the humans or the monsters! As the humans, the player must defend the cities from the creatures by using all the resources available. As monsters, the player must crush, stomp and obliterate every human (and everything) in sight! We’re not kidding, this game allows total destruction of everything!”

Game features:

Over 40 new units unique to KAIJU, including aircraft carriers, super attack planes, phase cannons, plasma mines, and artificial lightning generators, and “special” characters such as the “PSI”, the “Hero”, the “Brainy guy”, and the “Military guy”,
Create special characters that affect ‘normal’ units and structures. Just one example includes a unique character called a “PSI” that uses a sixth sense to battle the monsters. If the “PSI” enters a Radar Station, it becomes a “Monster Control Tower”, with the ability to ‘take control’ of any monster for a period of time.

Unfortunately DigiFX Interactive closed down in late 1997 due to financial issues. When the team was disbanded they were also working on other canned titles such as DigiFX Mission to Nexus Prime and Mythos.

Thanks to Celine for the contribution!

Others, PC / MAC

Hordes (System 3) [PC – Cancelled]

monokoma

04-06-2021

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Hordes is a cancelled real-time strategy game that was in development by System 3 around 1998, planned to be released on PC. At the time the company was quite beloved by gamers, thanks to such titles as The Last Ninja, Myth, International Karate, Putty and Constructor, but they also worked on many fascinating cancelled projects. While Hordes is listed on the official System 3 website under their unreleased projects, not many details are available online.

A short preview and a few screenshots from the game were published in Edge magazine (issue 55, 1998) and concept art is available on Dan Malone’s portfolio.

“Tipping the usual good VS bad story on its head, Hordes is a PC strategy game of commendable difference. The player controls one of three unholy “Clags” gods: Arclite, Cankor and Blacrot, each of whom has a particular theme. Blacrot’s hordes, for instance, can attack with various rot-based weapons. […] Hordes is intended to be far more action based than many of its contemporaries, with the player having 36 counties to battle through before reaching the seat of the Light Queen Edwinia. With 3 different forces to play, 36 levels and a totally non-linear plot, Hordes should have a serious amount of longevity.”

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Others, PC / MAC

Epsilon Conflict (Starbreeze Studios) [PC – Cancelled]

monokoma

28-05-2021

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The Epsilon Conflict is a cancelled sci-fi RTS game that was in development around 2001 by Starbreeze Studios and O3 Games, planned to be released on PC. The game was focused on the pro-gaming/ e-Sport community and the team recruited two top StarCraft players (Guillaume Patry “Grrrr…” and Victor Martyn “[9]eVERLAST”) to help design gameplay and mechanics.

The project was still in early development when announced and unfortunately they never showed any screenshot. Players would have been able to choose between three factions (similar to the Zerg, Protoss and Terran in StarCraft) and lead their army in a multi-scenario campaign with optional missions. Epsilon Conflict would feature almost 40 different types of units and 9 heroes with unique abilities, gaining experience and new skills, just like in an RPG.

Starbreeze Studios and O3 Games focused most of their efforts on the multiplayer mode, with an Anti-cheat system and audio / text chat between teams and allies. We can find some of the planned features in the original press release:

Easy and transparent rules of the game that allow you to fully develop your tactical potential.
Adapting SI making its own strategic decisions.
Navigation point system.
Campaign for single-player gameplay with integrated training.
A dynamic story evolving in 30 missions, with several decisive tasks.
Cooperative mode for single player.
Campaign editor.
An open storyline with an easy way to expand with additional campaigns and scripts.
Anti-cheat system in multiplayer mode.
Innovative system of communication between teams and allies.

And interview with Marco Ahlgren (lead designer of the game) was also published on Stomped:

“There will be 3 totally different sides in the game. They will have different production systems, supply systems, tech trees. In short they have totally different game play. That allows for a rich playing experience where you can just play another side when you start to feel bored of one type of game play. We reveal no details about the different sides at this point though.
36+ heroes. We are making a lot of cool/crazy units. This is one of the design phases that I enjoy the most. The craziest units have to be carefully tested though. But you would be surprised if you saw the wicked stuff that we come up with.
We have studied the present multiplayer modes on some different RTS titles. That experience tells us that making 25 different multiplayer modes is no good. The community will settle for the 3-4 best ones anyway. We will have 4-5 well worked through modes. The whole game is suited for tournament play.
We want to make the single player experience more like an “InteractiveMovie” where you as player should get sucked straight into the game and forget the world around then waking up after 5 hours saying, “Wow.” =)
We are working on a E3 prototype at the moment. It is all up and running already, but there is still a lot of functionality left to be implemented. If we wanted to, the project should be signed already. But it is very important to get the “right” publisher for this project. The publisher has to be of a certain size and it is very important to belong to the publishers highest priority titles. It is very easy to get lost somewhere amongst 50 title releases. We demand an 100% commitment.”

A year and a half after the start of the project, the Epsilon Conflict was canned. Rumors say the game turned out to not be as fun to play as they hoped for and Starbreeze Studios apparently feared it would not withstand competition against other RTS.

If you know someone who worked on this lost game and could help us preserve screenshots or videos, please let us know!

Thanks to Josef for the contribution!

Others, PC / MAC

Clan Wars (DMA Design) [Cancelled – PC]

monokoma

22-05-2021

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Clan Wars is a cancelled real time castle siege / tower defense strategy game set in medieval Scotland that was in development around 1998 – 1999 by DMA Design, the studio that created such popular games as Lemmings and the first Grand Theft Auto, and was later renamed to Rockstar North.

Previews for the game were published in a few gaming magazines at the time, such as Next Generation (issue 51, March 1999)

“DMA’s third title for ’99 is perhaps the most interesting (and certainly the most commercial). Still in the early stages of development, Clan Wars is a real time action / strategy game with (surprise, surprise) a unique twist. Instead of mining resources, amassing forces, and crawling around a map a la Command and Conquer (and every clone since), you simply decide whether to attack or defend for the duration of each battle.
The attacking force spends its money on building siege engines and arming its troops, and the defending force spends its resources building the best castle it can to defend itself from the attackers. Once the building period is over, the game switches to the battle, which is played out in fully scalable realtime 3D. And this time, the graphical bells and whistles are all present and accounted for.
As in Tanktics, the real joy of the game comes from manipulating the environment. Building a castle to withstand the onslaught of either a CPU or human opponent, is — quite literally — only half the battle, but it is incredibly engrossing, it’s easy to see why. iIt’s a toy that appeals to the kid in all of us — the kid who never grew up and still has a great time messing around with building blocks (or, in this case, parts of castles).”

The game was probably canned when DMA was bought by Gremlin Interactive and the team had to focus on finishing Body Harvest for the Nintendo 64. As we can read on Nostalgia Nerd’s article on the history of DMA Design:

“Riding at the peak of it’s creative output, DMA Design was then duely snapped up by British publisher Gremlin Interactive in late 1997. Impressed with DMA utilising their 3DMA graphics engine efficiently, and with plans for newer titles such as Clan Wars and Attack (both of which were cancelled) Gremlin wanted to closely collaborate with the existing DMA team and Dave Jones was quickly shuffled to the role of Creative Director.”

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