Future Killer is a cancelled sci-fi FPS that was in development around 2004 – 2006 by Futrix Studios, a team funded by former Ritual Entertainment level designer Thearrel McKinney. It would have probably been similar to other sci-fi horror titles such as Doom 3 and Resistance: Fall of Man, plus light “metroidvania” mechanics and featuring creepy alien enemies and teammates who could help or betray you. As we can read from the old Futrix Studios website:
“The first is an FPS game for the PC titled, “Future Killer”. Set in a futuristic earth setting, you are the only survivor of a failed genetic experiment. The experiments were developed by the government to produce work clones in an attempt to build a New Earth as their means of escaping a dying world from an alien invasion. The engine being used for the game is being kept under wraps until further development.”
In 2005 Gamecloud published an interview with McKinney where he shared some more details on Future Killer:
“Future Killer is a sci-fi FPS game based on a dying earth set in the future. The main character Yuen is the only survivor of the N.B.H. (New Breed Human) experiments conducted by the government. Playing the role of Yuen, you find yourself waking up in the middle of an alien invasion. Not knowing what has happened, you become informed by the people who find you, then set out to accomplish your different missions, find out why you were created and stop further invasion of the unknown alien race. Throughout the game, you team up with groups of human survivors, some of which can aid or betray you. Overall, there’s a number of plot twists in it that should catch the player by surprise. You have a pretty unique arsenal at your disposal, some of which can be upgraded by finding various items and modifying your weapons. That’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. Yuen also has special abilities that the player must use in order to progress through the game. We don’t want to give too much away right now, but we’re hoping that once players play through it, they’ll walk away feeling good from a unique gaming experience and not let down.”
At the same time Futrix Studios were also working on a fantasy first-person adventure for cellphones titled, “Deadly Gates”. In the end it seems they were not able to find a publisher interested in funding their projects: the team disbanded and all of their games got canned.
Ascension (AKA Volitant Assault) is a cancelled community-based online FPS that was in development around 2006 – 2007 by RenWerX, a team previously known for a few popular Tribes mods. By looking at footage and screenshots available it seems the game would have indeed been inspired by Tribes, with huge maps, jetpacks and vehicles in team VS team online matches.
Essentially RenWerx conceived an open, crowd-developer online multiplayer FPS, to create a better Tribes experience for hardcore players. As we can read in their old website:
“Renwerx has revealed that the final release title for its upcoming game will be ‘Ascension’, replacing the previous working title ‘Volitant Assault’. The name Ascension alludes to the freedom of movement afforded by the universal jetpack featured in the game, and also indicates a tangible evolution from past games of the genre.
Ascension is being described as an online ‘FPS+Z’ (First Person Shooter with advanced character movement on the Z axis). FPS+Z games typically use jetpacks to propel players through the air and across extreme terrain in a variety of game-types such as CTF, Rabbit, and Siege. The Renwerx game combines exhilarating freedom of movement with team-oriented gameplay to immerse its players in fantastic new worlds without limits.
Renwerx Project Lead, Nick “Novanix” Daum explains, “Some folks have played games like this in the past, but the vast majority of online gamers are still out there slogging it for miles across boring terrain. These gamers are going to find a liberating new experience thanks to the FPS+Z gameplay in Ascension.”
As you can imagine in the early ‘00s it was not as easy to develop such a game and in the end Renwerx had to give up their dreams and hopes.
Aero-Cross is a cancelled sequel to Namco’s classic Metro-Cross, a racing-platform game that was released in arcades in 1985. This new chapter planned PlayStation 3 Network and Xbox 360 Live Arcade was announced in 2011 and it would have been released for the “Namco Generations” series, conceived to modernize some of their classic titles, such as Pac-Man Championship Edition DX and Galaga Legions DX.
Aero-Cross would have followed the same gameplay as the original, with players running in linear levels trying to avoid obstacles and collecting items (but this time in a sci-fi setting). In the end the project was officially cancelled in 2012 along with the other missing Namco Generations title: Dancing Eye HD. Luckily in this case a playable demo for Aero-Cross was found by Ganonthegreat on an old PS3 demo-disc, and shared online on Archive.org
Spirits is a cancelled MMORPG / collectible card game that was in development around 2005 by Jadestone Group for the ill-fated N-Gage portable console / mobile phone. By taking advantage of the device’s mobile network features you could have been able to play against people from all around the world, fighting them and collecting new cards / monsters to use in your team / deck. As we can read in the original website:
“A long time ago, peace ruled the Earth as mankind lived in harmony with nature and all the other inhabitants of the planet – those you could see and those you couldn’t. Spirit beings born out of the four elements were all around us, and some humans could even communicate with them.
The memory of those ancient times is buried somewhere in the collective consciousness of mankind, but there are still spirit beings here to this day. SPIRITS™ tells the story of people that have been involved with the spirits in different ways over the millenia. The epic saga, which began in the ancient past of humanity, now plays out in the streets of today’s metropolitan cities.
SPIRITS™ is a massively multiplayer online (MMO) game with one main objective. You must fight the CUT – a doomsday sect trying to stop overpopulation by creating natural disasters to kill innocent people. You’ll have to hunt and collect spirits, test your skills in duels, perform rituals, and take on challenging missions that require tactical thinking and speedy reflexes.”
“Spirits aims to tap into the immensely addictive qualities of collectible card games, like Magic: the Gathering, to combine them with the massively multiplayer online capabilities of the N-Gage. It’s pretty clear that simply sticking a collectible card game, wholesale, into a video game doesn’t make for a great experience — and waves of mediocre Magic games have proven it — so Spirits is built upon a fairly complex backstory to provide the gameplay with some context.
The entire game will play out on N-Gage Arena, much like Pocket Kingdom does today. There are four basic gameplay elements in Spirits: collecting spirit cards, completing missions, dueling other players, and optimizing your “team” of spirits to keep it in fighting shape. To get new spirit cards, you’ll have to participate in a little minigame, called a “hunt,” where you actually catch spirits as they float around.
First, you assemble a team of six spirits that will comprise your troops. Your team and your opponent’s team are then placed on either end of a small isometric game board. Combat seemed to be really simple, at least at this point in development, so you select an attacking spirit, and then you choose an enemy spirit to target. The two collide, and damage is assigned. The gameplay’s turn-based, but both players make their decisions simultaneously, which adds a little more guesswork to the mix.”
They is a cancelled survival mystery-horror FPS that was in development for PC, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 by polish videogame developer Metropolis Software, founded in 1992 by Adrian Chmielarz and Grzegorz Miechowski. In 1997 the studio acquired the license of “The Witcher” from Andrzej Sapkowski, however, they ceded it around 2000 to CD Project as they were already worked on 3 games at the same time (one of them being the cult-following turn-based rpg game “Gorky 17“).
Metropolis started working on They between 2005 and 2006 and officially announced it at the Game Convention 2007, but CD Projekt acquired the studio in 2008. The majority of the team was then taken over to work on “The Witcher” series and in the end Metropolis were subsequently closed in 2009.
One of the most interesting mechanics conceived for They was its weapons customization system: you only had a single weapon, which could have been modified, upgraded and designed with hundreds of different items. The PC Action magazine mentioned “a large amount of over 250 upgrades and design parts“, including stickers and logos. As we can read on Destructoid:
“Throughout the game, weapon body-parts and plug-ins will frequently crop up for the collecting. Maybe they’ll be part of a boss’ arsenal, dropped when you kill it, or you might just find them lying around in the aftermath of a battle. However you get hold of them, they can be put together, Lego-style, and tweaked and tuned to make a gun to do whatever the player can think up.”
“Every variety of gunfire, from single-shot, to machine gun, to explosive, to laser, to pretty much anything else you can think of can be blended and combined with however many others you want, along with all kinds of special properties such as fire, ice, lighting, and God knows what else. On top of that, there are loads of little adaptations to be had in the way of reload speed, shot frequency, blast damage etc. You want a rapid-fire electro-shotgun with exploding shells? You’ve got it. Grenade launcher with freezing ammo and your choice of blast radius and trajectory? Why not?”
We also know from IGN’s preview, levels in They would have been partially destructible, to let players create new ways of moving around:
“Of course, this being the next generation and all, it’s possible to destroy some buildings with a well placed grenade or two which, interestingly, is more than a simple aesthetic gimmick – laying waste to buildings uncovers shortcuts through levels and even secret power-ups. However, it’s worth remembering that being hit by falling debris is seriously bad for your health so take precautions. “
Metropolis Software’s philosophy with the weapon customization system was detailed in an interview on GGMania:
“Q: You announced a unique weapon feature, where you are able to upgrade a flexible weapon to your individual needs. Can you tell us a bit more about that?
A: Without naming so many things of the weapon yet, you might think of a soldier in every war. He only wears some few weapons – mostly knife, gun and maybe pistol. Common FPS games are really unrealistic in that point of view, that a soldier is really able to wear 10 more or less heavy guns at the same time (or he must be HULK to carry them all). In THEY you will have this one weapon, where you identify yourself with, which you can customize and enhance it based on YOUR needs and preferences! You will be able to store setups, so you have the expected control system with keys 1-0 to have access to different types of weapon setups – but it still will be YOUR buddy, YOUR best friend, YOUR WEAPON. The appearance will change dramatically, but you are still able to identify yourself with the weapon. So what we will bring to the genre is some more realistic and believable approach in sort of weapon handling. The fear of players, to have only one gun can be easily refuted, as you have hundreds of combinations which you can store and customize at your own discretion – to create YOUR perfect weapon setup, store it to the expected keys 1-0 and have access to them at all time! So each player will have the weapons of HIS choice, a large variation to be used based on needed functions (gameplay relevant decision!) and need not to get along with standard weapons – this is something unique and new to the genre and will grant more freedom for each player! On the other hand, if someone WANTS’ his standard “pumpgun/rifle/Ak47” feeling, he is able to create that…but when he will figure out the fun and possibilities from our new weapon system he will get used to it soon.”
Weapon customization was essential, because you would fight against some weird and stealthy alien / robot creatures in a “not so distant future”. The setting was a destroyed English city and the main plot was told by a little, mysterious boy.
“Set in near-future London in a world crippled by increasingly severe terrorist attacks, THEY follows the story of a British soldier during the emergence of a new global threat. An army of robots has appeared and begun laying waste to everything around it, and while everyone has assumed that a new terrorist faction is behind it all, it will eventually turn out that things are a lot more complicated than that. The robots are far more intelligent in their combat tactics than anyone can believe possible, and seem to be able to work together without any visible signs of communication. Needless to say, humanity is taking a serious kicking to the face, and it’s during one of these kickings that the player’s story starts.”
“The game will take in around twelve levels, and IMC/Metropolis were keen to point out that they’re taking an episodic structure to the game’s story. Taking their model from shows like Heroes and The X-Files, they’ll be making each level work as an individual episode, but will be building a bigger overall story arc as the game progresses.”
We can only hope one day someone could find a playable version of They, so it could be preserved online.
Thanks to Sam and Daniel Nicaise and for the contributions!
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