New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Microsoft, Playstation 3 (PS3), Sony, Xbox 360

Turok 2 (Propaganda Games) [PC, Xbox 360, PS3 – Cancelled]

monokoma
14-12-2022
3 Comments

Turok 2 is a canceled first-person shooter that was developed by Propaganda Games and published by Disney Interactive from 2007 to 2009, probably for the PC, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 systems. It was the sequel to the reboot of the Turok game series released in 2008.

Little information exists on Turok 2 since the game was canceled before its official announcement in January 2009. As indicated by Kotaku, it seems that it was the economic crisis of 2008 which was the reason of it’s cancellation when Disney Interactive, owner of Propaganda Games and the Turok’s license, decided to lay off 70 Propaganda employees and cancel the game:

“Sources tell us that Vancouver based Propaganda Games is in the process of laying off approximately 70 employees. That reduction in workforce is likely closely tied to the cancellation of Turok 2, a title never officially announced by Disney, but one of two projects that Propaganda was working on, we’re told.”

Steve Wadsworth, president of the Walt Disney Internet Group, later said:

“As you can imagine, given economic conditions, every industry has been impacted on a global scale. In response to this challenging business environment, we have examined ways in which we might be able to work more efficiently. The elimination of existing positions that we communicated today was a necessary step that we had hoped to avoid.”

We can speculate that the gameplay would have been similar to the 2008 reboot with some never-before-seen additions, like new environments (swamps, desert areas) or new enemies in the series like renegade soldiers named Savage or creatures called Ork, as can be seen from the many concept arts that subsequently leaked onto the net, and hosted by the Turok Wiki Fandom. Another novelty would have been the addition of new firearms like the assault rifle, apparently already planned in the 2008’s game before being cut in the end, and the Jak, a modified version of the well-known cerebral bore, firing this time projectiles allowing to control for a certain period of time the enemy in order to be able to neutralize other threats, as we can see it in action on a raptor on one of the rare in-game screenshots. A multiplayer mode was also planned.

In June 2015, Tim Lewinson, who was senior designer and associate game director at Propaganda until his departure, spoke briefly about the game during an interview for duke64nukem.com:

D64: In percentage how far along was Turok 2 before being canceled?

T.L.: “Without putting too fine a point on it, we were moving out of pre-production and making significant headway on a vertical slice. In development terms, that refers to a small level that provides a polished core gameplay experience. The expectation is that a tiny portion of the game is brought to as near a ship state as possible to properly demonstrate how new features will work, etc.”

The same month, director and animator Jeremy Brown posted on his Vimeo account a short teaser for the game as he himself explained under the video:

“Years ago I worked on a game that was canceled. This is the trailer I had in mind for it while we were working on the game, and nearly a decade later, I made it for fun.”

On the 25th June 2022, Youtuber Matt McMuscles was able to get in touch with former Propaganda’s art director Daryl Mandryk, who shared some new information about the game and what precisely happened during that time:

“The basic idea for Turok 2 was that it took place some time after the events of the first game, on the same planet. But now the human elements had all gone feral and crazy for some reason. It mainly took place in a badlands/desert area environment. I think the team had learned a hard lesson about how difficult it was to pull off a jungle environment on the Xbox 360. So it had a sort of Mad Max meets Jurassic Park feel. The big hook was going to be the return of the cerebral bore, which would allow the players to control dinosaurs and wreak havoc. We had this prototyped and it was awesome! The project was basically put on the back burner when Disney needed a studio to develop the movie tie-in game for the new Tron. I don’t think Turok 2 was officially cancelled, but after Tron: Evolution was shipped the studio was really focused on its other project : Pirates of the Caribbean: Armada of the Damned. And many people were moved over to work on that. I think Disney felt this was a better financial bet than the Turok sequel. Regardless, within a few more months the studio was shut down and that was that.”

Since the cancellation of Turok 2, the series has stalled, although we were able to see remasters of the first two games by Nightdive Studios, released in 2015 and 2017 respectively.

Article updated by Daniel Nicaise

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

Urban Race (10Tacle Studios) [Xbox 360 / PC / PS3 – Cancelled]

U64 Staff & Contributors
13-12-2022
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Urban Race is a canceled multiplayer parkour racing game developed by 10Tacle Studios Belgium (formerly elseWhere Entertainment) for PC, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, in 2008.

The creation of Urban Race began on the remnants of Totems, a parkour action-platform game in development at 10Tacle until June 2008, when the financial problems of their parent company forced them to do a major restructuring towards online games and online worlds, as we can read on the Planet-Adelpha forum:

“(…) 10Tacle AG suffered quite a lot due to Elveon cancel, Totems being late and more over wrong investments here and there. So 10Tacle was out of cash, without a CEO and investors were not happy at all. With the new CEO, investors decided to change company’s orientation, focusing only on online games and online worlds, they had already a project in mind.”

“In the meantime as we saw that the financial situation was becoming critical at 10Tacle AG, the company decided to create a small spin off project based on what’ve being doing on Totems for 3 years, we worked on a project called Urban Race, a multiplayer parkour game yet very different from an esthetic point of view but really the same movement engine behind Totems.”

Using the technology initially created for Totems, Urban Race was a fast-paced on-foot racing game where players can use techniques from the sport of Parkour as well as aggressive attacks on other racers to complete a mad dash through ancient ruins.

Shortly before its cancellation, an anonymous source who worked on the game further explained some concepts to the French website Factornews:

“First of all, the game is intended to be a good quantity of fun where up to four players compete in races taking place both on the rooftops and in alleys, or on the docks. Thanks to the engine developed for Totems, the characters move easily around the scenery, jumping over grids and obstacles with ease.

Although this is a running race, there are ways of doing takedowns during the race, such as pushing an opponent against the wall, or grabbing them by the leg when they start climbing a wall. Obviously, each successful takedown gives you a good chunk of adrenaline (useful for making big jumps or even more impressive takedowns), on the other hand if you undergo a takedown, you will lose a little of it.

In addition to the classic racing modes, the circuits also contain their set of objects. Mario Kart fans, this game could have been for you: use the paint bucket to obscure your opponent’s view, send a Chihuahua bite their ankle, or drop stuffs on the road, just to block the path. These objects also allow crazy game modes like “King of the Chihuahua” (the one who keeps the furball as long as possible wins), “Take me down” (eliminate your opponents with takedowns, the last one in contention has won) or even “Paint it black” (Each paint pot used fills part of your opponents’ screen, when the screen is full, you are eliminated).”

Unfortunately still plagued by financial difficulties, 10Tacle Belgium closed in August 2008, due to a lack of publishers, definitely cancelling Urban Race during the process.

Article updated by Daniel Nicaise

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

Totems (10Tacle Studios) [Cancelled – Xbox 360, PC]

U64 Staff & Contributors
13-12-2022
No Comments

Totems is a canceled action/platformer game developed by 10Tacle Studios Belgium (formerly elseWhere Entertainment) for 10Tacle Studios, from 2005 to 2008, for the PC and Xbox 360.

Made by former developers of the game Outcast, Totems was an action/adventure game mixing modern day world events with the fantasy of native American religion where the player controls Gia, a parkour expert, who inherits various powers from four different animal totem spirits.

The game was revealed a day before the Leipzig’s Game Convention 2007 as we can read on Gamesindustry:

“Darmstadt, August 22nd 2007 – Today 10TACLE STUDIOS AG and 10TACLE STUDIOS BELGIUM officially announce the development of TOTEMS for PC and Xbox 360.

Inspired by the urban sport “Le Parkour“, TOTEMS is a super-heroic platform game with tactical elements that let the player magically transform the world and story to their own style and skill. This third-person 3D action adventure offers non-linear gameplay in a highly interactive environment and is designed to be accessible to the widest audience while offering depth for the core gamers. The player character as well as the enemy is able to use the environment to full extent thanks to the innovative Semantic Environment Sensing System (SESS). Super-heroic movement and combat come alive in a never seen before manner. The Belgian developer’s proprietary NeoReality Engine sets new standards for next-gen platforms and provides an unparalleled atmosphere and experience. Based on an elaborate and original mythology, TOTEMS offers an exciting new world to explore.”

“The PC and Xbox 360 release is scheduled for 2008.”

It was showed during the convention in which Gamespot managed to write a preview:

(…) Gia’s expertise in parkour comes from one of the four totem spirits whose powers she’s able to use. Her agility comes from the monkey spirit, her speed comes from the cheetah spirit, and her combat skills come from the bear spirit. We weren’t told what powers the songbird spirit will afford you, except that they have something to do with creativity. Interestingly, each of the four spirits is mapped to a different face button on the Xbox 360 controller, and so each button can be used to perform a massive number of different moves depending on the context in which you press it.

Using only the monkey button during our presentation, the player was able to navigate a number of different obstacles, including high walls, columns, wide gaps, and narrow ledges. The animation was seamless, and the one-button control system is purportedly possible because of how aware Gia and other characters in Totems are of their surroundings. This was demonstrated to us in a number of different ways. When slowly moving toward the corner of a rooftop, for example, Gia automatically stopped and leaned over the edge to look down, and when left standing idle next to a low wall, she casually brushed her hand along the top of it.

The anthropomorphic tigers that attacked Gia at one point were also very aware of the geometry around them, and were incorporating parkour-style wall jumps and the like into some of their own combat moves. Like Gia’s, their moves were occasionally superhuman, including cat leaps and muscle-ups worthy of the Agency operatives in Crackdown(…).

Unfortunately, nearly one year after it’s announcement, 10Tacle Studios filed for bankruptcy in the beginning of August 2008, shutting down 10Tacle Studios Belgium and cancelling every projects within the studio. We learned via Planet-Adelpha that the development was stopped in March of the same year and that the team had decided to make a similar game using the technology initially created for Totems with Urban Race, also canceled:

“10Tacle AG is in a big financial crisis and it is not over yet. Here at elseWhere Entertainment it has been 6 months since they don’t pay us. The company took on its personal cash and contracted debts in order to keep paying the employees until 2 months ago (since June in fact). So it has been two months since we’re not paid which is a difficult situation for everyone here and Yves Grolet had to take a decision, we couldn’t wait much longer for the money of 10Tacle. So Yves decided to close the studios.”

“From the business and development point of view, Totems was paused (heavy) end of March due to cash issues of 10Tacle, we were doing the vertical slice demo. We had quite a lot of things to show and positive feedbacks. I guess you saw the problem with Michele Pes and stuff, 10Tacle AG suffered quite a lot due to Elveon cancel, Totems being late and more over wrong investments here and there. So 10Tacle was out of cash, without a CEO and investors were not happy at all. With the new CEO, investors decided to change company’s orientation, focusing only on online games and online worlds, they had already a project in mind. So for the team the last 6 months were quite depressing and there was a lot of uncertainties, some people left the company.”

“In the meantime as we saw that the financial situation was becoming critical at 10Tacle AG, the company decided to create a small spin off project based on what’ve being doing on Totems for 3 years, we worked on a project called Urban Race, a multiplayer parkour game yet very different from an esthetic point of view but really the same movement engine behind Totems.”

After that, several former developers returned to Appeal Studios, including former CEO Yves Grolet, currently developing Outcast 2: A New Beginning for THQ Nordic.

Article updated by Daniel Nicaise

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Microsoft, PC / MAC, Playstation 2 (PS2), Sony, Xbox

Symbiosis (elseWhere Entertainment) [PC/XBOX/PS2 – Tech Demo/Cancelled]

U64 Staff & Contributors
13-12-2022
1 Comment

Symbiosis (formerly known as Project Alpha and The Incident) is a canceled futuristic stealth action/adventure game developed by elseWhere Entertainment in 2002 for PC, alongside potential Xbox and Playstation 2 versions.

Information about this project is pretty scarce. The game was designed by former developers of Appeal Studios, known for developing the 1999 PC game Outcast. The title was first mentioned in 2002 by Gamekult:

“(…) elseWhere Entertainment, a two-year-old company is currently working on Project Alpha, a working title which, admittedly -even from its founder, will be the conceptual continuation of the first Outcast.”

It was then Jeuxvideo.com which, in 2003, revealed the first images of the game alongside new information:

“elseWhere Entertainment is currently developing Symbiosis, an adventure/action game planned for PC and consoles. If the developers maintain still some mystery concerning the scenario of the game, we know that the action will take place in a futuristic universe with a crucial part of interactions between the characters. The team wishes to go beyond their previous project, Outcast, in terms of A.I. and storytelling, leveraging their NeoReality technology.”

After that, elseWhere Entertainment decided to cancel Symbiosis in order to focus on Totems instead, also canceled a few years later. Michaël Defroyennes shared in 2013, on his personal blog, some additional information on the concept of the game:

“Some concepts I did for a game prototype called Symbiosis, started in September 2002 : The game concept was about action/stealth combats in a space station on an unfriendly planet, unfortunately it was stopped to focus on other prototypes.”

Oddly enough, Gamestar also shared information regarding the concept of Symbiosis, slightly different than what was revealed until now. According to them, Symbiosis was going to be:

“(…) A squad based tactic shooter with a 4 player coop mode set in an futuristic environment. Before it was announced as Symbiosis it had the code names Project Alpha and The Incident.”

After the cancellation of Symbiosis, elseWhere Entertainment was acquired by 10Tacle Studios and released their only game in 2006, a sport title named David Douillet Judo, before shutting down in 2008.

Article by Daniel Nicaise

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PC / MAC, Playstation 2 (PS2), Sony

Outcast 2: The Lost Paradise [PC, PS2 – Cancelled]

yota
12-12-2022
4 Comments

Outcast 2: The Lost Paradise is a canceled action-adventure game that was developed from 1999 to 2001 by Appeal Studios and published by Infogrames for the PC and the Playstation 2. It was the sequel to the game Outcast, released in 1999 exclusively on PC and also developed by Appeal.

Franck Sauer, co-founder of Appeal, shared the full experience of the development of Outcast 2 on his personal website:

HOW IT ALL STARTED

PRE-PRODUCTION

In mid-1999, right after the release of Outcast, we started pitching new ideas about a sequel and tried to convince Infogrames (our publisher) to fund a pre-production, quickly.

Infogrames had stock in our studio Appeal, and as partners they were more inclined to help us proceed with the sequel. They were cautious though. The sales reports from Outcast were underwhelming, way below their one million initial target (we ended up selling slightly over 400k boxed units).

At first we managed to sign a pre-production deal and we proceed with R&D and graphics design. As sales were disapointing on the PC, Infogrames insisted that we should make the game for consoles first. They also insisted to have more action and less adventure, because that’s what console gamers want they said, something Yves Grolet in particular was not very happy with.

FROM PC TO PLAYSTATION 2

Another difficulty started when it became evident the Playstation 2 would be the best selling console of the generation. Yves wanted to work on the Xbox, which was the superior console in term of rendering capabilities, and easier to work with, but from the publisher’s point of view it made no sense to work for the smaller installed base. We all liked the idea of working on consoles in general, as close systems have their sets of challenges but are very interesting to work on, and we had this arcade background that made us probably overconfident, especially considering the Playstation 2.

The Playstation 2 was a very difficult console to work with, especially for a studio with most of its engineers only experienced on PC, and it took some times to get the dev kits and actually realise what a PS2 was (there was a lot of speculation at the time). With the dev kits finally available, we were progressing slowly and initially had a lot of performances and stability issues. At some point, Yves would decide to quit and start his own company (elseWhere Entertainment) to work on the Xbox.

We finally signed a production agreement. At first it was a 7 million contract, but got reduced to 5 million as Infogrames was starting to feel pressure from the market. We managed to develop a working demo with a lot more work also done behind the scene on the game’s universe and environments, but we were far from being ready to ship an actual product. Internal difficulties also raised when we hired a designer to replace Yves, only to find out a bit late that the guy was heading the design in the wrong direction. That didn’t help either as we had to rethink the whole design again in the middle of the production.

The project was killed after spending about 3 millions as Infogrames stocks were hitting a new low in 2001 after the internet bubble (and all IT companies as a side effects) exploded. They pretty much killed all their 3rd party projects, focussing all remaining funds to their internal studio, Eden Games.

THE START OF THE END

However, as Infogrames were shareholders in our company, they couldn’t kill us so easily (they would have to clear-up the debts). Instead they sold us back their stocks in exchange of a new pre-production contract around a Tintin game. We didn’t have much choice if we wanted to keep the studio alive, but for them it was a win-win situation, they were set free from their shareholder duties and had a working prototype they could show to Moulinsart (the company that holds the rights to Tintin).

When the Tintin prototype was completed, they did not sign the Tintin game (purposely or not we have no idea) and we went bankrupt in 2002. Yann Robert and I purchased back most of the assets belonging to Appeal the Curator could not sell, including the unfinished technology that would help us later to develop and (finally) ship Playstation 2 games Wild Water Adrenaline and Mountain Bike Adrenaline.

Some additional details were shared in February 2015 by Gamestar during an interview with Frank Sauer. We learned in particular that the game was running on a brand new engine called Himalaya, replacing the voxel technology, used on the first title, in favor of one working with polygons. For instance, it allowed to display swirling dust particles in some levels.

Still according to Franck Sauer, the story took place just after the events of the first Outcast, where the main character, Cutter Slade, now living alone in a hut in the mountains, receives a distress call from a Talan, the natives from the planet Adelpha, about an invasion of humans, called New World Army and helped by soldier bots, coming to colonize the planet. A parallel with the film Avatar was notably drawn. Other novelties planned in the sequel were the addition of an all-terrain vehicle for travelling in the open world as well as new levels and territories, such as, for example, a spaceship that Cutter had to hijack in order to be able to move from one area to another.

After more than a decade without the license being mentioned, Appeal, under the name DAOKA Studio at the time, attempted a first comeback for a reboot of the first game in high definition called Outcast Reboot HD in 2014 on Kickstarter, unfortunately without success. Later that same year, the developers, under the Fresh3D’s name, ported the original game to Steam as Outcast 1.1, before managing to release their HD remake in 2017 under the name Outcast: Second Contact on PC, Xbox One and Playstation 4 thanks to BigBen Interactive as publisher. At the beginning of 2019, the publisher THQ Nordic bought the license before officially announcing a sequel on September 17 2021, still developed by the original team, renamed once again Appeal Studios, and called Outcast 2: A New Beginning, almost 20 years after the cancellation of the original planned sequel.

Article updated by Daniel Nicaise

Thanks to Marcel Lutrix for the contribution!

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