Demon Isle is a cancelled online-focused action RPG that was in development by Cat Daddy Games around 1996 / 1997, planned to be published by Sierra Entertainment for PC. For its time it was graphically impressive, promising a huge 3D island to explore, full of dungeons you could tackle in 16-players online multiplayer. While the game was previewed in a few gaming magazines (such as Next Generation June 1997 and Inter Action Summer 1997), soon it quietly vanished and was never completed.
“The game is set in the world of Magincia, which has been invaded by armies of evil creatures swarming off Demon Isle. The military, unable to destroy the island’s seven Temples to Evil, recruits mercenaries and adventurers to complete the job, which is where the players come in.”
“Set in a dangerous, medieval time. Demon Isle features a state-of-the-art 3-D engine with a first person perspective to tempt your waking hours. It incorporates Fantasy Role-Playing elements into an action-oriented environment that is not for the weak of heart”
“Explore the surface of an entire island and battle the evil that lurks in temples, caves, and the caverns below. Improve your skills and build up your character, and you may just find yourself in an all-out demonic war. And if you thought demons were enough to keep you up at night your on-line warriors will keep you goin’ until breakfast Play head-to-head or cooperatively with up to 16 players over a LAN or the Internet and battle for fame and glory.”
“Demon Isle has been built from the ground up as a multiplayer game. It runs either on a LAN or over the Internet, using the same client-server model as Blizzard’s Diablo on battle.net: players connect through their own provider, the game contacts Cat Daddy, and a session is launched with one player’s machine as the server. However, unlike Diablo, which limits games to four players, Demon Isle handles literally dozens of players, depending on the capabilities of the server’s hardware.”
We can also still find Sierra’s original press release for the game:
“Enter the land of Magincia where hordes of evil creatures have been driven off the main continents, and pushed back to their apparent source, Demon Isle. The ruling powers of Magincia are willing to pay a handsome bounty to anyone brave and strong enough to venture to Demon Isle and destroy the seven temples of evil, obtaining the missing pieces of the magic relic, and obliterate the root of all evil itself – the Demon Zorax.
In this first person, action-oriented, fantasy role-playing game, players will face numerous exhilarating predicaments and intense combat as they battle a motley bunch of nasty creatures. Demon Isle is designed from the ground up as a single and multi-player game, promising to set new standards by allowing up to 16 players to play head-to-head or cooperatively via LAN, modem or Internet. In addition, Demon Isle boasts a revolutionary proprietary 3D engine, creating fractally enhanced terrain and polygon-based objects for unprecedented level of detail, and features custom MMX support and Direct3D support for acceleration on 3D cards.”
If you know someone who worked on this lost project and could help us finding out why it was canned, please let us know!
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