New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Neverhood 3? [Concept – PC?]

The Neverhood is a point and click adventure game made by Doug TenNapel and released for PC by DreamWorks Studios in 1996.

Two years later a 2d platform game called Skullmonkey, which it was intended as a sequel of the first game, was created by the same developers for PSX.  It was a commercial failure, and so the IP was quickly forgotten by the producer.

However in 2012 sketches probably intended for a new game in the series appeared in a Neverhood fan forum. You can see those concept arts in the gallery below.

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Dementium 2 [Tech Demo – DS]

Dementium 2 is a FPS developed by Renegade Kid and released for DS in 2010. Below we can see some screenshots and a video of a tech demo that was created before the actual development of the game started. Gregg Hargrove briefly talked about it in the Renegade Kid board:

I wanted to comment on how amazed I am that anyone was even able to find any info on the original “Village” demo that became D2. Wow!

I also wanted to give a shout out to the artist that helped me develop that demo, Erik McKenney, who sadly was not able to stay on with us past the demo. Times were crazy and we didn’t know where what was going to happen so we lost a great artist to a more stable company. D2 would have been that much better if we could have kept him on.

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Untitled Cavia FPS (aka “Catacombs”) [Cancelled – PS3 / X360]

Catacombs is a cancelled FPS that was being developed by Cavia for Square-Enix in 2010. The game was never officially announced and the project was shelved in 2011, but in 2012 Siliconera leaked some screenshots and informations about it.

Catacombs was basically an interesting crossover between a RPG with random-generated dungeons and a team-based shooter. The player could upgrade the guns that he found in the ruins but also use magic. Four different characters were available, each one with its own story, which according to the narrative director Brandon Sheffield had an important role in the game:

Since we’re all inherently different and our mind is the only thing we can truly know, then our reality exists only inside of our brains. So each stage was about these people destroying their own fears and doubts and also their identity. They were supposed to be overcoming their sense of self, and how that related to their identity as an American, but also their otherness.”

EDGE in 2012 played an early build of the game that ran on a heavily modifed version of Mindjack engine.

For more informations check Siliconera article and EDGE special feature.

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Wildlife: Forest Survival [XBLA / PSN – Cancelled]

Wildlife: Forest Survival is a cancelled game developed by Electronic Arts which was supposed to be released in 2011 for XBLA/PSN.

The object of Wildlife was to survive in one of the eight different arenas available by exploiting the unique characteristics of the four selectable animals (a hawk, a rabbit, a gator, a fox).

Up to twelve players could also battle each other online. Sadly, it seems that EA decided to shelf the project for good.

For more informations about the game check Destructoid preview.

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Dinosaur Legend (Kyouryuu Densetsu) [NES – Cancelled]

Dinosaur Legend (Kyouryuu Densetsu) is a cancelled NES / Famicom game that was in development by HAL Laboratory, a famous developer that gave Nintendo popular series as Kirby and Super Smash Bros. They created many games for the Famicom/NES, but one of them was never release: Dinosaur Legend. It was going to be a curious RPG where you travel with a dinosaur to save the world. It had a game mechanic where the dinosaur steadily evolves (could it have been a Pokemon Ante litteram?).

It is currently unknown why the game was never published but you can see a few screenshots below.

Thanks to Susumu for the translation from japanese.

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