Beta + Cancelled Others Video Games - Page 18 of 173

Black Powder Red Earth is a turn-based tactics game published and developed by Echelon Software and released on PC and mobile phones in 2021.

As we can read on Steam, the story takes place in the near present, where you step into the event horizon of a failed state in the Middle East, as Private Military Contractor – Cold Harbor, hunting jihadist terrorists in war-torn sprawls as a lethal surrogate for the host nation. The license is also available in tabletop wargames and graphic novels.

But before being released in this form, Black Powder Red Earth took a much different approach. The game was announced in June 2007 by its developers as a multiplayer First-Person Shooter, powered by the Unreal Engine 3 and taking place in the distant future as announced by FiringSquad:

“Rather than build an elaborate 3D world space, Black Powder Red Earth uses the same framework commonly found on the Web for social networking. Players are already used to creating and managing online identities on sites like Myspace and Orkut. They are also buying and selling real and virtual products on sites like Ebay, iTunes and Amazon. By using these familiar tools, Black Powder Red Earth keeps the learning curve as flat as possible,” says Jon Chang, president of Echelon. “Best of all, unbinding these activities from the game executable gives players access to the world of Black Powder Red Earth either from inside the game or from the outside via any Web-enabled device. Persistence is the real world, anytime the players want it.”
Set on Mars in 2043, Players act as mercenary soldiers executing contracts for warring corporations in a variety of urban/industrial sprawls, using bleeding edge weapons in hi-tech team based battles for virtual currency that can be used to purchase new weapons, upgrade existing weapons, buy armor and tactical enhancements to fine tune their in-game experience. As players rank up, they will also be able to open their own mercenary franchises. These franchises provide a base for recruiting other players into a clan, offer in- game advantages for members and allow the owners to open their own storefronts that compete against the game MSRPs and can generate “cash” from new players of the game.
Multiplayer-only, allowing up to 16 players to battle online together
Next-generation graphics powered by Unreal Engine 3
8 contract campaign plays out in a detailed near-future 3D environments
Earn “virt cash” to collect more than 100 parts and accessories
Customize weapons, browse for new items, and build a career in a familiar Web interface in- game or from any Web browser at any time!
Build a franchise private military company (PMC) with other players or create a competing store front to sell arms and gear to other players
Association with former PMC operatives ensures realistic game play

During the same period, a short trailer was also unveiled, but after that, the game fell completely into limbo before resurfacing in 2011, then 2014, in the form of a graphic novel, the background completely modified but using the same war-based themes.

If you know someone who worked on this version of Black Powder Red Earth and could help us preserve more screenshots, footage or details, please let us know!

Video:

Images:

PC / MAC, Playstation 2 (PS2), Xbox, Xbox 360

Sabotage 1943/Sabotage (Velvet Assassin) [PC, PS2, XBOX – Cancelled/Prototype]

U64 Staff & Contributors

01-11-2022

No Comments

Velvet Assassin is a stealth game released in 2009 for PC and Xbox 360, developed by Replay Studios (formerly Team Toro) and published by SouthPeak Games. The title takes place during the Second World War, where player take control of Violette Summer, a British spy in the service of MI6, attempting to thwart the Nazi war effort, operating behind enemy lines. The game’s story was inspired by the real-life secret agent/saboteur Violette Szabo.

But before being released in this form, the game had two other versions, during a hectic development spanning approximately from 2002 until its release in 2009.

Sabotage 1943

In February 2003, German studio Team Toro revealed its very first game, Sabotage 1943, a First-Person Shooter whose scenario and background were identical to Velvet Assassin. It is then planned for a release during the Winter of 2003/2004 on PC, Playstation 2 and Xbox, and the press release revealed some information:

“France 1943. Behind the façade of stability a secret, desperate, and cruel war of liberation has already begun. As a spy, saboteur, and partisan of the French resistance movement, the Résistance, you will also get involved in this fight.
The omnipresent enemy keeps everything under control and reacts on every kind of resistance in a barbarous and brutal way. An open military confrontation would be a lost cause.
Therefore, another way has to be found to fight the enemy. You conspire against the Nazis, operate underground, and pretend to be a harmless civilian. This way you can deceive and infiltrate the Nazis to strike secretly. But don’t fall in the hands of the Gestapo that even plants spies in the resistance groups…”
Engine Specs
3D tactical first-person shooter with the newest technologies offers extremely realistic game visuals. Dynamic real-time light and shadow effects perfectly reflect the sinister atmosphere of the background story.
Particle system makes the explosions look extremely realistic. Environmental effects, such as dust, rain and leaves, create a dark and gloomy atmosphere.
Flexible camera control and exact details of the game world even allow the player to peek through keyholes.
Game Features
22 levels will lead you through the cruel story, which is based on true historical facts.
Scenarios in authentic French theaters of war in 1943/44, such as Paris occupied by German forces.
Seven different characters with various specific attributes
Complex enemy AI with numerous surprising behavior patterns
Various clothing and uniforms allow the player to operate secretly in military areas behind the enemy lines.
Player’s behavior has a direct effect on the relationship between the population and the Résistance (betrayal, assistance, etc.)
By skillfully sneaking up on the enemy, soldiers can be overwhelmed and forced at gunpoint to open doors and reveal vital information
When under fire, the player can fake death by using the “Playing Dead Mode” to deceive the enemy

Shortly after, the developer showed a first trailer, then, later, it was a video preview from Gamestar in April of the same year that was published.

Sabotage

However, after these revelations, the game felt into total obscurity and was not mentionned by its developer until May 2006, just after completing Crashday for Moon Byte Studios. Unsurprisingly, after almost 2 and a half years of absence, the project had undergone a complete overhaul. Simply renamed Sabotage, the title did not change context nor main character, but took the form of a Third-Person Shooter, planned exclusively on PC for 2007 and published by Anaconda, the label of DTP Entertainment. It was presented at the E3 and Game Convention 2006 shows, and it was again Gamestar that released a video preview in November of the same year, notably showing several phases of gunfights.

Early 2007 should have been the release window for Sabotage, but it wasn’t. The title would reappear briefly during the Game Convention 2007 for a release now planned in Autumn 2008, where we learned that Gamecock Media Group took over the publishing rights.

Finally, in March 2008, new changes occured for this project, now named Velvet Assassin with an Xbox 360 version in addition, it would see its main character partially redesigned, as well as its HUD. The gunfights phases that we could see in Gamestar’s preview seem to have been mostly dropped in favor of a more tactical and stealth-oriented gameplay.

Velvet Assassin would finally see the light in Spring 2009, after experiencing an additional delay and a final change of publisher with SouthPeak Games, following the acquisition of Gamecock Media Group. The game received mixed to average critical reviews and Replay Studios filed for bankruptcy in August 2009, only 3 months after its release.

During these 7 years of existence, Replay Studios seemed to have a lot of difficulty in the development of its titles. In addition to the chaotic one for Sabotage 1943, the company also had Survivor in production, a title announced in October 2004. Crashday, only available on PC since 2006, should have been released in 2005, also on Playstation 2 and Xbox. At some point, we could even read on the now-defunct Replay Studios website this:

“Sabotage 1943 is a tactical shooter game in WWII. As allied elite agent Jason Turner you perform dangerous, top-secret guerilla and sabotaging activities which officially don’t exist behind enemy lines.”

Sabotage 1943 video:

Sabotage 1943 images:

Sabotage images:

PC / MAC

Mindhack (Mindware Studios) [PC – Cancelled]

U64 Staff & Contributors

31-10-2022

No Comments

Mindhack is a cancelled Massive Multiplayer Online First Person Shooter developed by Mindware Studios around 2001-2002, exclusively for PC.

No information about Mindhack’s background are available at the moment. By looking at the few artworks and screenshots of the game, we can tell that it was set in a futuristic science fiction universe. The game was revealed in March 2002 with a short explanation of its concept on a dedicated website:

“Mindhack is an Online Action Game which combines popular and proven elements of first person action games with the principles of mass online games (massive socializing support, persistent character, etc.). The system of game rules is relatively straight forward while providing a great number of game types and many different ways players can enjoy the game.
Mindhack is not intended solely for hardcore players but also for mass-market players preferring the action genre. Players will be attracted by familiar action principles combined with many socializing elements which will allow them to interact with other players in ways not seen today in games of this type.”

Using a proprietary engine called MENG, it seems the game was showed at the Game Developers Conference 2002 in order to sign with a publisher, apparently without success, before falling into obscurity for a few years.

In 2006, following the future release of Mac and Linux versions of their first game, Cold War, Phoronix was able to interview programmer Patrik Rak. Mindhack was briefly mentionned about its cancellation:

“(…) The goal at that time was to develop a FPS based MMO game, but several month later we have concluded that the MMO market became so crowded that all but the best backed up of these project are necessarily going to bite the dust. So we quickly steered to more conventional waters of the third-person single player world, before any serious harm was done.”

According to former CEO Karel Papik, the technology primarly developed for Mindhack would later served as a basis for Cold War.

Mindhack wasn’t the only cancelled game from Mindware Studios. In 2006, the company had to axe Voodoo Nights and Unknown Heroes, both due to a lack of publishers interested in the projects.

If you know someone who worked on Mindhack and could help us preserve more screenshots, footage or details, please let us know!

Images:

Microsoft, Others, PC / MAC, Playstation 2 (PS2), Playstation 3 (PS3), Sony, Xbox 360

Amon Ra (Widescreen Games) [PS2 – Prototype]

U64 Staff & Contributors

31-10-2022

No Comments

Amon Ra is a cancelled adventure game developed by Widescreen Games around 2003, exclusively for the Playstation 2.

As we can read on the personal website of Franck Sauer, Widescreen Games had decided to mandate him and Yann Robert to work on this demo, just after the closure of their own company, Appeal Studios, following the cancellation of Outcast 2: The Lost Paradise and Tintin, using assets and technology previously created for those projects:

“After Appeal (our previous studio) went bankrupt (see Outcast II and Tintin stories) Yann and I kept working together on some work for hire while thinking about exactly what to do next.
During that time, Olivier Masclef who had been producer on Outcast came to us with an adventure game concept called Amon Ra. His studio (Widescreen Games) was busy on another production and he asked us to build an early prototype on Playstation 2 based on this concept.
As we had acquired the technology from Outcast II we had something to start with to quickly build the prototype. Yann started cleaning and enhancing the various unfinished technologies that would later serve as the basis for our FreshEngine.
To help me quickly edit the map, I used some refurbished assets from the defunct Outcast II and built some new stuff on top of it. My friend Francois-Xavier Melard worked on the character.
This was a short work of a couple weeks and after this prototype, the project never went further into development.”
Technology
“Some very advanced technologies for the time can be seen in action here (some of which were already implemented in the Outcast II prototype), such as realtime tesselation and vector displacement (water), radiosity and light probes (lighting of the character dependant on the environment, with light bouncing), soft shadows, dynamically rendered billboard (small vegetation), and pixel-occluded lens flares.
One of the amazing thing was the incredible amount of triangles the Playstation 2 was capable of pumping. Around 300k in a single frame, with the prototype running at 60 frames per seconds (…)”

Strangely enough, according to the now-defunct website of Widescreen Games, the game was planned for the PC, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. Here was what we could read about the storyline and its features:

The 10 commandments meets Stargate
Amon Ra is a 3rd person action adventure game mixing action phases, social interactions and puzzles solving in the totally new and lifelike world, mainly inspired by the ancient Egypt period.
As the hero, you will interact with hundreds of locals, engage in plenty of combat against aliens and go on numerous adventure game quests.
Storyline:
The player is named Shail, a young slave who will meet his fate; he is the one chosen by the Ankh entity to perform the Prophecy : free the human race from the Seth’s domination. This extra-terrestrial race has dominated his folks over centuries due to its superior knowledge and advanced technology.
Throughout the game, the player will interact with human guilds as the merchants, priests, rebels and an ancient civilization. Obviously, each of them carries out different goals and interests.
Conspiracies, romance, twists and turns will drive the story.
Will Shail be able to achieve his own objective to overthrow the Seths?
Unique Selling Points
A cutting-edge in-house engine to serve the game.
The original universe of the ancient Egypt mixed with some sci-fi components.
Numerous “organic” and huge locations : from mysterious temples, overcrowded bazaars, resting oasis, frightening caves to gigantic spacecrafts!
Hundreds of hi-detailed character models suiting the period as well as fantasy ones.
A brand new system of quests layers which will confer to the player the feeling to manage his own and original quest in a live universe.
Breath-taking actions due to the use of ancient magic and high-tech weapons.
Enhanced AI system for the NPCs who manage their life according their own interests. Any action you take has ripple effects on the whole community.

During their 10 years of existence, Widescreen Games had a lot of numerous other canceled titles.

Images:

Videos:

PC / MAC

The Triangle (Digital Spray Studios) [PC – Cancelled]

U64 Staff & Contributors

24-10-2022

No Comments

The Triangle is a cancelled First-Person Shooter developed around 2003-2004 by Digital Spray Studios, only for the PC.

As we can read on the now-defunct website of it’s developer, The Triangle was:

“A First Person Shooter, in a classical “kill ’em all” style. Game actions take place at the mysterious islands in the Atlantic Ocean, in the region of the, so called, Bermuda Triangle. The main hero is the explorer of mystery of the Bermuda Triangle. He finds temples, palaces and the lost cities of an unknown antique civilization and tries to solve the secret of it’s downfall. When he starts the exploration of those ancient buildings, our hero finds out that they are not desolated, but populated by some kind of fantastic alien creatures, which are not “very friendly” to him. Now he has to try hard to remain alive.”

The game was revealed at the Game Developers Conference 2003, along with You Are Empty, using the same proprietary engine, the DS2 Engine. Some media drawn a comparison with the game Serious Sam.

Little information is available on The Triangle to date. Unlike You Are Empty, which had found a publisher, The Triangle quickly disappeared from radar screens when it was announced and never resurfaced. Only a few screenshots are currently available to remember its existence. We can assume that the developers did not manage to find a potential publisher and decided to postpone the development of the game to devote themselves to You Are Empty, which was released in Eastern Europe in 2006 and in North America in 2007, thanks to Atari, after a chaotic development.

If you know someone who worked on The Triangle and could help us preserve more screenshots, footage or details, please let us know!

Images: