New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

The Lost Keys was an action-adventure game in development by 2Digital Productions in Dubai, and scheduled for release in 2003 for PC. The game took heavy influence from old-school platformers, including Crash Bandicoot. Unfortunately, the project was never released for unknown reasons. From one of the developer’s archived blogs, we can learn more about what the game was going to be about:

Sarman Khalid  (Software Engineer): The Lost Keys is a commercial 3D third-person action game for kids of ages 10-16. The game has 10 different levels with 3 playability styles. It was built with Tyfirty along with its level editing tool. The game was released in Dubai in June 2003. The game can be played with the joypad or the keyboard and it also enables the player to save and load his game.
The level editor of this game was also built in-house by me.

Technical Features:

• Geo mip mapping.
• Particle systems.
• OBB collision detection.
• Scene partitioning for optimization.
• Optimization by grouping duplicated objects.
• Game saving and loading.

My Role: Programming the game core and the level editing tool, graphics optimization supervising
Date: 2003
Client: 2 Digital Productions, Dubai

Images

Credit: Iyad Abbas

One day, while everyone was inside this vast underwater structure, minding their own business and admiring the view, someone decided to shatter the glass and flood us all with a game called Hydrophobia. Thankfully, no one was injured — but many were swept away in astonishment by this experimental title where water is both your greatest ally and your enemy.

The early seeds of Hydrophobia were laid in 2006, when Dark Energy Digital set out to create an experience unlike anything before it, powered by their proprietary HydroEngine — also referred to sometimes in early press coverage as InfiniteWorlds.

Not much is widely documented about the game’s lengthy development, though we do know it spent three to four years in production. Fortunately, fragments of beta footage have been unearthed, offering an early glimpse of protagonist Kate Wilson and other beta changes.

E3 2008 Footage

Some of the early differences in this beta footage are the following:

• Different running animation
• Kate is wearing different clothes
• Different face texture

Early Renders of Kate Wilson before the “Prophecy” name change

Environment and Character Concept Art

Terminal Reality was riding a strong wave in the early 2000s. Fresh off the success of Nocturne and the Blair Witch titles, the studio’s next project, BloodRayne, was shaping up to be a bloody, stylised action game.

However, researcher Susan Flint recently found out that Terminal Reality was quietly involved in several projects behind the scenes, some of which were cancelled under mysterious circumstances. One of the most obscure among them was Guardian City: The Forgotten.

Available material shows us that Terminal Reality planned to collaborate with Khameleon Entertainment on what appears to have been an action-oriented game rooted in horror. And hear this, too: the project would not have used the studio’s Infernal Engine. Instead, Terminal Reality developed a bespoke engine specifically for The Forgotten.

What ultimately happened to the project remains unknown. Flint notes, however, that The Forgotten was at one point intended to appear as a cameo character in BloodRayne. It is unknown which platforms the game was targetting, but it could have been the PS2.

Credit: Susan Flint

Fracture was an interesting third-person shooter on the PS3 and Xbox 360. What do you do when you’re surrounded by enemies from every corner, and they’re gunning for you relentlessly? Worse, you’re about to die! Well,  fear not because the developers answered that by making you own the battlefield.  Lack of cover? No problem, you can just raise the ground to protect you. Can’t reach a higher place? No stairs? No problem, raise the ground.

Considering the lack of documented info on this game, here are some beta content and concept art of the game:

E3 2007 footage:

• In this phase of development, the protagonist was known as Mason Briggs
• Different running animation
• Different suit
• Different HUD
• Different guns, weapons icons, and SFX
• Different map design

Possible Early 2008 Footage

• In this phase of development, the protagonist’s name remained Mason Briggs. Lawrence’s voice was also different here.
• Different running animation
• Some different gun SFX compared to the final game
• Different enemies?
• Different map HUD
• The deformation bar is a bit different
• The armour bar is on the bottom right, instead of the bottom-middle of the screen. Also, it’s quite different.