Others

Others, PC / MAC

Delta Force: Angel Falls [PC – Cancelled]

monokoma
31-05-2021
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Delta Force: Angel Falls is a cancelled strategy-focused FPS in the “Delta Force” series that was in development for PC by Novalogic between 2007 and 2012. Missions would have been set in Colombia and Venezuela, with the US military trying to take down drug cartels and totalitarian regimes. As in previous DF titles, players would have been able to explore huge outdoor environments, eliminating enemies, assassinating political targets and destroying military equipment.

Some details about the game were shared by Novalogic on their old website:

“In the near future, set in the north-west region of Central America and spanning both Colombia and Venezuela, “Delta Force: Angel Falls” presents the rural, sparsely populated areas of this exotic locale.  The South American environment provides a premise which is naturally beautiful and full of new millennium conflicts.

Marginal governments, involved in local expansionism, continually scuffle with one another and with major global powers. Complicating matters, drug cartels have evolved beyond money to political forces rivaling established governments. Influenced by current events, the game is both topical and novel.

The sometimes local philosophy of “your enemy is my friend and your friend is my enemy” gives rise to a multitude of ever-changing alliances and conflicts which drive the game’s rapid action. The culmination of the conflict takes place in the Angel Falls area of Venezuela providing both a spectacular setting and a surprise ending.”

  • Exciting single player missions spread over several campaigns.
  • Challenging multiplayer maps supporting multiple game types.
  • Scenarios, tactics and equipment inspired by extensive consultations with former Delta Force personnel.
  • Large, open environments with operating land, air and sea vehicles.
  • Gratifying gunplay, well-balanced weapons, and tactically interesting dynamic environments.
  • Support for huge numbers of combatants per game with co-operative play against all new AI.

Sometime in 2011 the team opened an Alpha Phase for the game, accepting applications from fans. Unfortunately in the end the game was never completed and we don’t know how much was done before its cancellation.

As far as we know, Angel Falls was a different project from The Unit: Operation Acid Gambit, another cancelled game by Novalogic (but they may have shared the same 3D engine). In October 2016 the team vanished, their assets and IP (including Delta Force) were bought out by THQ Nordic.

Thanks to Daniel Nicaise for the contribution!

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Others, PC / MAC

Epsilon Conflict (Starbreeze Studios) [PC – Cancelled]

monokoma
28-05-2021
2 Comments

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

World War Z (Midway Newcastle) [Cancelled – Xbox 360, PS3, PC]

monokoma
14-05-2021
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World War Z is a cancelled action game based on Max Brooks’ book, that was in development at Midway Newcastle around 2008. This was the same team behind the Wheelman video game, that after working on it pitched two different projects: one based on a new IP (Necessary Force), the other based on World War Z. Midway decided to let the team work on the new IP, so their zombie game pitch was just canned.

In the end Midway Newcastle closed in July 2009 and Necessary Force was also cancelled. Concept art from their World War Z project was later shared online by former Midway artists.

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Others, PC / MAC

Hab-12 (Ratloop) [Cancelled – PC]

U64 Staff & Contributors
07-05-2021
2 Comments

Hab-12 is a cancelled, third-person action-adventure game in-development at Ratloop from 1998 to 1999. The company was founded by 5 people, one of which being Lucas Pope, who would go on to make Papers Please and Return of the Obra Dinn. Ratloop started out making the full-conversion Quake mod Malice while under the name Team Epochalypse, then moved on to something much more ambitious.

Hab-12 was to be their next game, a sci-fi adventure about surviving various hostile environments. A documentary about the game was released on Youtube by Massimiliano Camassa discussing many aspects of the game and it’s development. Camassa was given access to many development materials including the design document and 2 demos of the game, one from 1998 and the other from 1999

Hab-12’s gameplay would have been a mix of classic 2D adventure games, like the Monkey Island series, and a more traditional third person shooter. Camassa’s documentary also discusses how media and the public viewed the game:

“Tomb Raider was the game most people thought of upon hearing that Hab-12 was an action adventure game. Yet, Hab-12 is a slower-paced, cinematic, puzzle-based adventure game experience. The demo is highly scripted and after playing the demo and studying the game design document the rest of the game would likely have a similar game structure.”

Like many adventure contemporary to Hab-12, puzzles were a major part of the demos, even starting with one. Miray, the game’s protagonist, would be stuck in a venus flytrap-like plant and would have to swing from side-to-side to escape. Other puzzles in the demos included having to distract monsters to sneak around and maneuvering around a giant slug alien’s breath to survive.

Cassan’s documentary reveals how Ratloop intended to make Hab-12’s plot stand out. To achieve this, the devs intended to focus the game’s story on the ever-changing relationship between the down-to-earth Miray and the outlandish biological A.I PAX. After a cataclysmic event occurs on board The Sentient, a research ship, Miray would have to make his way through all 12 habitats (or Habs) in order to escape. The documentary summarizes the game’s story with a quote:

“Hab-12 is all about man vs. wild, but also a remarkable story about a normal guy and an unhinged bio-computer.”

The games levels were intended to take place across the 12 habitations, with each hab featuring a different ecosystem for Miray to overcome. Revealed in screenshots and demos were an autumn-like red forest, an icy cave system, a swampy area with gigantic trees, a volcanic area, and more. The variety in level design was quite impressive for the era, and Miray was to have several costume changes to reflect the surroundings. These levels were also planned to be intensely detailed and impressive, the documentary even shows how amazed publications were with the red forest level, saying “Every leaf is rendered. Every damned one. That’s how good the graphics engine is.”

Despite the game impressing media outlets with its graphics and gameplay, the project failed to find any publishers. Hab-12’s ambition, along with Ratloop’s relative inexperience at the time, was what ultimately killed the project. The project was planned to have a sequel and a novel adaptation written by a member of the team. Ratloop now exists as 3 companies, Ratloop inc, Ratloop Asia, and Ratloop Games Canada. Ratloop Canada is currently working on the turn-based FPS shooter Lemnis Gate.

Article by Alex Cutler, thanks to Jackgrimm99  for the contribution

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