Witchwood [Cancelled – Playstation, Saturn, PC, Jaguar, Amiga]

Witchwood [Cancelled – Playstation, Saturn, PC, Jaguar, Amiga]

Witchwood is a cancelled action adventure game that was in development from 1994 to 1996 by Team 17, the studio best known for the Worms series. The game would have been published by Ocean for Amiga and PC, but in 1995 moved to PC, Playstation, Saturn, and Jaguar. As noted by Hallfiry of the Betaarchive Forum, while working on Witchwood, Team 17 was also developing Speris Legacy; another action adventure similar to the Legend of Zelda games that was released on Amiga in 1996.

Witchwood-Team-17-joystick-64

The reason for the project’s termination is as of yet unknown. One possibility is that Team 17’s publishing partner, Ocean, elected to drop the game’s funding in light of Speris’ apparently lacklustre sales; rather than risk making another loss.

Despite the game’s cancellation, its soundtrack was released by Team17 composer, Bjørn Lynne, in 1996, and a playable demo of Witchwood was leaked online some years ago: you can download it from Kult Game.

Thanks to Tom Barker for the contribution!

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14 thoughts on “Witchwood [Cancelled – Playstation, Saturn, PC, Jaguar, Amiga]

      1. eSPy

        also on Witchwood:

        “an A1200 AGA version was planned but was dropped” – October 1995
        http://web.archive.org/web/19961018201009/http://www.team17.com/T17/teamtalk/tt2.html

        No demo released – December 1995
        http://web.archive.org/web/19961018201313/http://www.team17.com/T17/teamtalk/tt4b.html#13

        “While you say it’s about time PC owners had a game in that genre, the question has to be asked, ‘just how many PC owners would buy it?’
        This is what prevents us from making such a game. There isn’t the market for one. Witness the demise of our Witchwood project…” – February 1996

        “For some reason I can’t find anyone who knows anything about your game Witchwood. I can’t even find it in any store! What’s going on!!! Nobody has even heard of the game except me. I have only seen one very small artical on the game in a uk magazine PC-Format, a long time ago and that was it. It was the first article I have ever seen on a game that was truly a RPG like The Legand of Zelda for the SNES. Any info? Or demo?

        Witchwood was scrapped early on in devlopment. That’s all the details I have I’m afraid.” – 28 May 1996

        http://web.archive.org/web/19961018200744/http://www.team17.com/T17/teamtalk/tt10a.html#1

  1. eSPy

    Links to the Team 17 site where Bjorn Lynne released the soundtrack (midi, ram and mp3):
    http://web.archive.org/web/19981202055407/http://www2.team17.com/~blynne/witchwood.html

    Originally released March 1996 on Mellow Records
    Catalogue no. MMP288
    Digitally remastered and re-released on LynneMusic Productions June 1998
    Catalogue no. LYNCD001

    About this album:
    This is an album of calm, serene, and beautifully picturesque music, inspired by the nordic/scandinavian forests. Appearing on guitar is Ken Senior, who has often been complimented on his warm, melodic guitar style, and he fits perfectly into the melodic jewels on this album. Also some medieval inspired passages – pastoral, mystic, and simply beautiful. After this album had sold out the entire first pressing, Bjorn brought the original master tapes back to his (now updated) studio and brushed up the sound, as well as re-recorded a few tracks. The result is a new and improved version of “Witchwood”, published in 1998.

    Track listing:

    01. Witchwood Prologue
    02. The Woodlands
    03. The Forest Speaks, part 1
    04. Sunlight at the Mooring – a Jetty on the Lake
    05. The Forest Speaks, part 2
    06. Homeland Farmland
    07. The Forest Speaks, part 3
    08. Tell Tale Signs
    09. The Forest Speaks, part 4
    10. The Town of Witchwoode
    11. After the Rain (Dew)
    12. A Presence in the Air
    13. The Sinister Maze – a Journey through the Catacombs
    14. The Forest Speaks, part 5
    15. The Faery Woods
    16. Recollection (Sea of Memories, Part 1)
    17. Nostalgia (Sea of Memories, Part 2)
    18. The Gathering
    19. Witchwood

  2. Ross Sillifant

    Huge thanks for the link eSPy :-)

    I’d always assumed by that point in Team 17’s life they were developing 1st for PC as that market was growing at a steady rate of knots, where as the Amig’s was in rapid decline and then seeing which of the formats in the console wars were the ones to back and they like so many other UK developers (Domark, Core, ATD etc etc) soon realised the Jaguar was never going to achive the installed user base it needed, price cuts or not, and any plans for anything on it after Worms, were rapidly dropped.

    I’d guess the original plan was to finish the PC version and then port to other consoles after?.

    So i doubt any real work was ever started on the Jaguar version, maybe some test coding?.

    They must have realised early on just how badly Jaguar was doing and after Ocean Software dropped the Jaguar (never finished Toki or Lobo) they knew they’d never recoup any investment in resources, made on any Jaguar games as there simply was’nt a market to sell them too.

  3. Ross Sillifant

    Alan Bunker, Team 17 PR was quoted in June 94 talking about Jaguar being impressive technically,offering a lot of flexibility etc.

    But he made clear Team 17 remained open minded and flexible over all Next Gen development and they say 3DO as the up an coming system and we’re watching PS-X,Saturn and Nintendo’s Project Reality, closely.

    So,no surprise to see any Jaguar projects dropped once it was clear system was dying at retail..

  4. Ross Sillifant

    So, i looked into the whole Team 17 and the Jaguar side of things and this is all from a coder within Team 17 itself..

    Both Atari and 3DO had approached Team 17 to sign them up as official developers, but Team 17 still hadn’t signed up to the Jaguar by the end of 1993 as they needed to see the Jaguar prove itself as commercialy viable platform.

    They had been in contact with Atari and were in possession of Jaguar technical documents,but didn’t even own a retail Jaguar console for evulation purposes at this stage.

    In February 1994 Atari announces Team 17 as an Official Jaguar developer..even though they had no Jaguar development system and nor did they in May of that year!.

    Whilst they viewed the Jaguar as a more attractive platform to develop for than the 3DO as it was cheaper…they didn’t sound that impressed with the hardware in private :-))

    From the source at Team 17:

    “High numbers doesn’t make a platform. Marketing and software does.
    3DO has tons more credibility than Atari, and Atari has had a habit of hyping products before release, and when the product finally ships
    (one year after promise) much of the hyperbole turns out to be just that.”

    ” Remember the Falcon hype? I actually thought of getting one when I saw the press releases from Atari claiming awesome graphics and processing
    capability for a very low price ($700?). When it was finally released it wasn’t so interesting anymore – it turned out to be much more expensive, and it’s performance didn’t live up to Atari’s claims.”

    “With the Jaguar, the history seem to repeat itself. It appears that the Jaguar isn’t going to cost $199 at all, but is going to sell for $250
    to $299. Add the cost of a CD to that, claimed to cost $200-$250, and you’re up to the 3DO player cost. Judging from the screenshots I’ve seen
    so far, the software isn’t going to be too hot either. I’ve seen better
    graphics in standard Amiga games. Very unimpressive.”

    Ouch :-))

  5. Ross Sillifant

    Tiny snippet on gameplay:

    You’d need to enlist the help of the local wildlife to help solve puzzles in the game apparently.

  6. Ross Sillifant

    Martyn Brown May 1995 giving a status update of various titles:

    + Pussies Galore
            
            We dropped this. Unfortunately the game just wasn`t going anywhere and
            we felt that it was not worth releasing for the sake of it. We had
            spent 12 months on it, but c’est la vie.   

          
    +           – WitchWood

            This is now a PC/SATURN/PLAYSTATION/JAG game which is rather large and stuff, it will not appear on the Amiga. However, a Zelda style
     game called “Speris Legacy” will, and is Amiga only.

    +           – King of Thives

            Dropped quite some time ago due to the gameplay being tosh.
            It looked lovely but that’s not all you want is it?
            The coders, Andreas and Rico, are working on Project X 2
            – but thats a project that will not be finished/released until
            mid 1996 and it’s a next-gen console thing.

  7. Mr Ross Sillifant

    Ahhh good old Team 17.

    Claimed they’d do 3 or 4 titles then quit

    Never develop for PC or Console

    Say likes of F17 Challenge, Overdrive and Cardiaxx should never of been released.

  8. Ross Sillifant

    From the early announcements, when game listed as PC, AMIGA, PC CD, CD32, and Jaguar..

    The floppy disk versions had an expected release date of Easter 1995 and the CD versions, which would incorporate digitized speech, wouldn’t hit until September 1995

  9. Ross Sillifant

    Simon Butler kindly passed on this information regarding the Jaguar version of Witchwood:

    “I worked on Amiga/PC Witchwood at Team 17. It was never going to get off the ground on those platforms so no Jaguar version was planned.”

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