New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

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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Fallen Frontier [PC / XBLA / PSN – Cancelled]

Fallen Frontier is a 2d shooter developed by Moonshot Games which was supposed to be released for PC, XBLA and PSN. As we can see from the video and the screenshots below, it seems that the game was directly inspired by Bionic Commando, inasmuch as the main character could use his grappling hook to pull enemies and to swing across gaps. An offline and online co-op mode was also planned.

It looked quite interesting, but unfortunately Moonshot Games decided to cancel Fallen Frontier in 2013  because, as we can read on joystiq, they wanted to focus on mobile and social games instead:

Post-PAX we came to the grim realization that the market had shifted pretty substantially since we first started working on the game,” Isla said. “The console downloadable platforms had plateaued somewhat, and publishers were less excited about investing there. A game that had sold itself easily the first two times all of a sudden became a much harder sell the third time. By that time, the real interest and the accompanying dollars seemed to had moved on to mobile and social.”

For more informations check the co-optimus hands-on.

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