Peacebreakers is a cancelled war-themed parody FPS that was in development around 2006 by L’Art and would have been published on PC by JoWooD Productions. The team planned to offer a crazy, funny take on the genre: for example in the trailer you can see soldiers riding cows and driving a tractor. Peacebreakers would have been published in “Episodic Chapters”, with each one continuing the story as in a TV series featuring “TV-style intro videos and cut-scenes”. It seems the game was announced at the 2006 Leipzig Games Convention, but it soon vanished and today no one remembers about it.
On Gamepressure we can read the original press release (?):
“Unlike many contemporary FP shooters, where all matters are treated with deadly seriousness, this title contains a whole range of humorous elements. This can be seen, for example, in the missions we play, or prepared by the authors of crazy team members. During the game we take control over one of the several available tenants.
The actual gameplay was mainly directed at unrestricted violence. It is also worth noting that the action of the game was set in the near future. So we can use various (often futuristic) gadgets. Various vehicles play a very important role here, which we can of course use. These can be military jeeps, hummer vehicles, tanks or even tractors and flying machines (such as helicopters and biplanes). Each of the unlocked vehicles can be subjected to additional modifications. These are primarily better weapons, however, there were also quite crazy objects, such as spoilers that were pleasing to the eye.
Peacebreakers has of course a fully fledged multiplayer. You can choose between several standard play modes such as Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, or Assault.”
Bladeball is a cancelled extreme sport game that was in development by Cat Mother around 2002, for PC and the original Xbox. It was inspired by the Rollerball movie and you could imagine it as a more “violent” version of soccer / football: two teams in an arena, trying to score their point by any means. The team was able to develop an early prototype, but it was not as fun to play as they imagined it to be and decided to cancel it, to work on another game (Dead Justice, which was also canned). Unfortunately only a few, tiny screenshots remain from this lost project: we tried upscaling them to have a better idea of how Bladeball could have looked like in 2002. You can find them in the gallery below.
Wish is a cancelled MMORPG that was in development by Mutable Realms between 2002 and 2005, planned to be released on PC. Like many overly ambitious projects, Wish fell under the weight of its own concept. The game promised to be the world’s first “Ultra Massive” Online RPG: according to Mutable Realms the game would simultaneously support up to 10.000 players in a single world / server, with no divided zones nor shards.
More details about its gameplay and world-settings were shared by many websites, such as IGN:
“player guilds will be able to reclaim towns and become “Noble Houses”. These Noble Houses can declare war on each other, as part of the ongoing story where, as Rickey indicated, the “world has fallen to barbarism and petty warlords.” Thus, you have player vs. player combat in these house wars. Should someone not wish to be a part of this, they simply do not participate in a Noble House or strive to make their House a peaceful one. “
“Character advancement will follow a skill-based system. The selection of playable races named so far includes a half-dozen familiar archetypes ranging from Humans to Orcs, Elves, Halflings, Dwarves and Gnomes. There’s also one we don’t see as often – and when we do, it’s invariably in the role of a monster – the Cyclops. “
“Wish is providing that control in the form of the Houses. Being a House means conquering a monster-controlled town and becoming responsible for its well-being. You gain control of the town, its buildings, and the resources that surround it, and you get rewarded by being able to collect taxes on transactions within that territory.”
“The various towns successfully replicate the feeling of medieval villages, complete with fortified walls, domesticated animals and inhabitants that continuously go about their daily business. Player characters have a fair amount of weapons and armor to equip thus far, and the color of clothing can be altered through use of a dying tub. Spell effects, while currently sparse, show dazzling potential as in the case of the Necromancer’s Decay cantrip, which issues forth a large skeletal ghost and several gravestones around the caster. “
“At present, monster loot primarily consists of gold and resources such as hides, although a few creatures drop weapons. Since characters have no level indicators or experience to accumulate, it facilitates the ability for players of varying skill levels to aid each other in group combat. “
“Live Content is the primary defining feature of Wish. In the ongoing Beta 2.0 test we publish a daily newspaper, which contains clues to what may come to pass, as well as summaries of what happened on the previous day. The events described within the paper are actual in-game events and refer to real players. We now mirror this paper online in our newspaper section. You can read all five daily papers there. New papers will be added daily. “
“Wish has been shut down because with the data we gathered during the first 10 days of our Beta 2.0 test, even with our best-case projections for player numbers, we could not have reached enough subscribers for Wish to sustain itself.”
Engadget and Escapist published a couple of articles with more details about what happened to the project:
“The beta lasted only nine days. On January 9, 2005, after careful consideration of the way the beta had played out, examination of our internal metrics and an honest appraisal of the MMOG landscape (WoW launched the previous November), we made the decision to shut things down.”
“Wish had no single cause of death, but overhype played a huge role. Our statistics didn’t lie. At every step of the way, from signing up for beta, to downloading and installing the client, to playing the game for more than an hour, we lost huge percentages of players. In case we didn’t trust the stats, tons of players told us about their departure on our forums, as well.”
“For small and mid-sized developers, this battle can never be fully won. Usually, simple economics means they’re going to produce mid-quality titles. What they need to recognize is what niche their game fills and try to attract a community that respects that. A decent game can be sunk if the community expects more than what’s delivered and simply doesn’t buy it on principal.”
“In the end, Wish’s assets were carved up and sold off, with some being used forIrth Online.”
Tribal Lore is a cancelled “tribe-building resource management” strategy game that would have been published by Gremlin Interactive in the late ‘90s. The team used a sophisticated mix of polygons and sprites for the game’s graphics, which looked quite impressive for its time. Gameplay would have been similar to Command & Conquer and Age Of Empires, but with a Celtic mysticism twist.
We can read some more details from the original Tribal Lore PR, preserved by the Gremlin Archive among some concept renders:
“Tribal Lore is a 3D magic ‘n’ combat strategy game, with a mind-blowing AI, set in a mystical pseudo-Celtic environment. Set in the mythical ‘Land’, Tribal Lore explores the relationships, alliances and frequent squabbles among four arcane races: the Cruithná, the Shamanka, the Bruann and the Nammad.
Players can choose to take control of any one of the four tribes, each with its own distinct graphic and gameplay nuances. The careful management of the environment will allow growth of wealth & technological resources, allowing the construction of an array of temples, armouries, strongholds and fortresses.
Exploration will give access to magical sites allowing accumulation of major power. In Tribal Lore, magical power comes from your surroundings, and can be ‘tapped’ via dolmen, menhirs and other standing stones. Your druids can channel this energy in a variety of ways: morphing the terrain, affecting weather conditions, devastating foes or empowering heroes.
Further options including a scenario game (with missions & a slowly unfolding plot experienced from four perspectives) and full four-player network capabilities put Tribal Lore in a league of its own.”
“All seemed well, then wham – out of nowhere the publisher pulled the plug and the project, and all my work, was forever consigned to the slush pile. I was later told it was a financial decision made by people far removed from studio development. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
The Wall is a cancelled immersive sim that was in development between 2005 and 2008 by Burut Creative Team and Play Ten, planned to be released on Playstation 3 and PC. Gameplay would have been similar to Deus Ex, with players helping one of three major factions in a dystopian future: The Government, The Environmentalists, and The Church. NPCs would react dynamically to your actions in sand-box levels you could freely explore to choose how to resolve missions, using customizable weapons, vehicles and special powers.
We can read some details about the game in interviews published at the time by PS3Land and FiringSquad:
“I believe the concept of “The Wall” world is a grotesque reflection of the modern world. We want to show all the avarice and ambition of transnational corporations, who pursue their business targets regardless of the consequences. In their quest for profit often the great treasures of the past, the cultural heritage of Humanity is sacrificed. Trying to improve the world, some greedy corporate giants are destroying it in fact, without paying any attention to this sad truth and firmly believing in the righteousness of their ways. They continue to push the deadly balance wheel, which is poised to crush them in the end. Also we want to show religious fanaticism with it’s terrible bigotry and superstition. Often the fundamentalist zealots are ready to devastate the existing world, just to create an ideal one they imagine in its place.”
“The game’s concept went through many iterations. Our efforts finally bore fruit, and we’ve invented around a dozen of features that are unique to the genre, and should be very interesting to the gamers. Among them are the totally destructible environment, intense development of the character’s relations with the outside world, the team and rankings which change during the course of events.”
The Wall was previewed by some gaming websites, such as CheatCC, Ixbt, and IGN:
“Various super-human abilities will be revealed throughout the course of the game, no doubt proving useful for overcoming certain obstacles and defeating enemies. Developers claim that personality points and actions will affect the plot and how characters react to the player, ala Deus Ex. Which side you choose also affects the game content, including weapons. For example the Government rifles are very industrial, while the Environmentalist firearms are handcrafted with leather and groovy characters etched into them. Weapons are customizable and there are vehicles to drive”
“Players will become Adam – a young man genetically modified by the scientists of the Church. Waking up after suspended animation, Adam must go to fulfill the mission entrusted to him, but the deep freeze slightly affected his brain. As a result of amnesia, Adam remains on his own, and is free to choose his own destiny.”
“The Wall will offer non-linear gameplay and it is up to you to choose whether to strengthen the power of the Government by eradicating the dissatisfied, help an environmentalist or become the God of a New religion. Not only the style of the game depends on the choices you make, but also its endings.”
“About 25 missions are planned, taking place in a wide variety of places – from the skyscrapers of the Government to the underwater levels of poor neighborhoods.”
“One of the more noticeable elements includes highly-destructible environments with numerous break points. Objects, parts of buildings, entire buildings, and other sections of the play area can be gradually and fully destroyed. The amount of destruction is entirely dependent on the type of weapon being used to create it too. An example that Play Ten uses to illustrate this is that a tree won’t be seriously damaged by a pistol, but a rocket launcher will take care of it quite nicely. This sort of destruction isn’t just for looks, though — use can do things like destroy catwalk supports to knock enemies down from snipe points as well. “
“The addition of squad members with specific personalities is one such inclusion, as its RPG-like ranking system affects how people react to the hero. Missions are nonlinear too and like other open-ended games before it, The Wall will give users the option to take on primary and bonus missions that affect the ultimate outcome of the story.”
As far as we know the game was last seen at the Leipzig Convention 2008, then quietly vanished, forgotten by everyone. Play Ten was bought by Bestway Group in October 2008 and merged alongside two other big Russian publishers: Russobit-M and Game Factory Interactive. We assume the new company was not interested in publishing the game, and without a publisher Burut switched their resources to other projects (such as Cannon Fodder 3).
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