New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Others, PC / MAC

Epsilon Conflict (Starbreeze Studios) [PC – Cancelled]

monokoma
28-05-2021
2 Comments

The Epsilon Conflict is a cancelled sci-fi RTS game that was in development around 2001 by Starbreeze Studios and O3 Games, planned to be released on PC. The game was focused on the pro-gaming/ e-Sport community and the team recruited two top StarCraft players (Guillaume Patry “Grrrr…” and Victor Martyn “[9]eVERLAST”) to help design gameplay and mechanics.

The project was still in early development when announced and unfortunately they never showed any screenshot. Players would have been able to choose between three factions (similar to the Zerg, Protoss and Terran in StarCraft) and lead their army in a multi-scenario campaign with optional missions. Epsilon Conflict would feature almost 40 different types of units and 9 heroes with unique abilities, gaining experience and new skills, just like in an RPG.

Starbreeze Studios and O3 Games focused most of their efforts on the multiplayer mode, with an Anti-cheat system and audio / text chat between teams and allies. We can find some of the planned features in the original press release:

  • Easy and transparent rules of the game that allow you to fully develop your tactical potential.
  • Adapting SI making its own strategic decisions.
  • Navigation point system.
  • Campaign for single-player gameplay with integrated training.
  • A dynamic story evolving in 30 missions, with several decisive tasks.
  • Cooperative mode for single player.
  • Campaign editor.
  • An open storyline with an easy way to expand with additional campaigns and scripts.
  • Anti-cheat system in multiplayer mode.
  • Innovative system of communication between teams and allies.

And interview with Marco Ahlgren (lead designer of the game) was also published on Stomped:

“There will be 3 totally different sides in the game. They will have different production systems, supply systems, tech trees. In short they have totally different game play. That allows for a rich playing experience where you can just play another side when you start to feel bored of one type of game play. We reveal no details about the different sides at this point though.

36+ heroes. We are making a lot of cool/crazy units. This is one of the design phases that I enjoy the most. The craziest units have to be carefully tested though. But you would be surprised if you saw the wicked stuff that we come up with.

We have studied the present multiplayer modes on some different RTS titles. That experience tells us that making 25 different multiplayer modes is no good. The community will settle for the 3-4 best ones anyway. We will have 4-5 well worked through modes. The whole game is suited for tournament play.

We want to make the single player experience more like an “InteractiveMovie” where you as player should get sucked straight into the game and forget the world around then waking up after 5 hours saying, “Wow.” =)

We are working on a E3 prototype at the moment. It is all up and running already, but there is still a lot of functionality left to be implemented. If we wanted to, the project should be signed already. But it is very important to get the “right” publisher for this project. The publisher has to be of a certain size and it is very important to belong to the publishers highest priority titles. It is very easy to get lost somewhere amongst 50 title releases. We demand an 100% commitment.”

A year and a half after the start of the project, the Epsilon Conflict  was canned. Rumors say the game turned out to not be as fun to play as they hoped for and Starbreeze Studios apparently feared it would not withstand competition against other RTS.

If you know someone who worked on this lost game and could help us preserve screenshots or videos, please let us know!

Thanks to Josef for the contribution!

Others, PC / MAC

Clan Wars (DMA Design) [Cancelled – PC]

monokoma
22-05-2021
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Clan Wars is a cancelled real time castle siege / tower defense strategy game set in medieval Scotland that was in development around 1998 – 1999 by DMA Design, the studio that created such popular games as Lemmings and the first Grand Theft Auto, and was later renamed to Rockstar North.

Previews for the game were published in a few gaming magazines at the time, such as Next Generation (issue 51, March 1999)

“DMA’s third title for ’99 is perhaps the  most interesting (and certainly the most  commercial). Still in the early stages of  development, Clan Wars is a real time  action / strategy game with (surprise, surprise) a unique twist. Instead of mining  resources, amassing forces, and crawling  around a map a la Command and  Conquer (and every clone since), you  simply decide whether to attack or defend for the duration of each battle.

The attacking force spends its money on building siege engines and arming its  troops, and the defending force spends its  resources building the best castle it can to  defend itself from the attackers. Once the  building period is over, the game switches  to the battle, which is played out in fully  scalable realtime 3D.  And this time, the  graphical bells and whistles are all present  and accounted for.

As in Tanktics, the real joy of the  game comes from manipulating the environment. Building a castle to withstand the onslaught of either a CPU  or human opponent, is — quite literally —  only half the battle, but it is incredibly  engrossing, it’s easy to see why. iIt’s a toy  that appeals to the kid in all of us — the  kid who never grew up and still has a  great time messing around with building blocks (or, in this case, parts of castles).”

The game was probably canned when DMA was bought by Gremlin Interactive and the team had to focus on finishing Body Harvest for the Nintendo 64. As we can read on Nostalgia Nerd’s article on the history of DMA Design:

“Riding at the peak of it’s creative output, DMA Design was then duely snapped up by British publisher Gremlin Interactive in late 1997. Impressed with DMA utilising their 3DMA graphics engine efficiently, and with plans for newer titles such as Clan Wars and Attack (both of which were cancelled) Gremlin wanted to closely collaborate with the existing DMA team and Dave Jones was quickly shuffled to the role of Creative Director.”

Images:

Nintendo, Nintendo DS

War Monster [Nintendo DS – Tech Demo, Cancelled]

monokoma
22-05-2021
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Wicked Witch Software is a video game developer founded in 2001 which created a few original IPs for their projects. One of these IPs was “War Monster”, a medieval fantasy world similar to Warcraft that could have been used for many different kinds of games, such as RTS, platform, action adventure and even MMORPG. This Nintendo DS tech demo was created by the team to pitch their skills to different publishers, hoping to find someone who could be interested in supporting their ideas.

Details about this War Monster DS demo were shared by WWS on their old website:

“We would love to see an awesome multiplayer RPG on handheld. Imagine while traversing the open world you come across a dungeon: you could enter alone or connect to other players to explore the dungeon together. Each dungeon would increase in difficulty and adjust the challenges as more players join your team!

  • Deeply immersive 3d world and a varied cast of characters from tiny fairies to massive giants!
  • Unlimited random levels and scripted quests to complete and achieve!
  • Immersive RPG elements with customizable characters, weapons, abilities and attacks.
  • Unlock and explore worlds and seek out mystical items to aid in your adventure.”

As with their Game Boy Color version of War Monster, unfortunately the team was not able to get funds to work on this Nintendo DS project, so it had to be canned. The War Monster IP was later reused to create a RTS released (?) for Cell Phones.

Images:

Nintendo, Nintendo DS

Winnetou: Wild Land [Nintendo DS – Cancelled]

monokoma
21-05-2021
No Comments

Winnetou: Wild Land is a cancelled side-scrolling action game that was in development by Snapdragon Games for Nintendo DS around 2007 / 2008. It was based on a fictional Native American hero created by German author Karl May, but at the moment no other details are available about this lost game. As far as we know Winnetou: Wild Land was officially announced by the team, possibly to find a publisher interested in funding the project. Unfortunately it seems they were not able to sign a contract and Winnetou: Wild Land was soon canned. Today only a bunch of screenshots and mock-ups remain to remember it was once in development.

Images:

Nintendo, Nintendo 64 & 64DD

Wicked! (VIS Interactive) [Nintendo 64 – Cancelled]

monokoma
15-05-2021
No Comments

Wicked! is a cancelled action adventure that was in development by VIS Interactive for Nintendo 64. The team also worked on “Earthworm Jim 3D” and “Tom and Jerry in Fists of Furry” for the N64, but Wicked would have been one of their few original IPs. It seems the game could have been an action adventure with magical settings, inspired by such TV series as “Sabrina, the Teenage Witch”.

Images from a VIS Interactive pamphlet shown some of the characters designed for this canned game:

Huge thanks to Kirk Ewing and Iain Roberts for the contribution!

The project was never shown to the public, but a design doc was found by video game collectors some years ago (if you have a copy of this document, please let us know!). There’s also an updated concept art for Wicked!’s protagonist (Jenny), drawn by Paul Simms with the following note:

“Jenny’s not bad, she’s….. Wicked. An old, old N64 demo character brought up to date”.