Kyskrew (also known as “Call Of Destiny“) is a cancelled RPG for Dreamcast and PC, originally meant to be released sometime in fall / winter of 2001. Even if the game seems to have been mostly a fan-project in early concept stage, it’s quite interesting to learn about it because before this article there were not many evidences about its existence online: for sure it’s one of the most forgotten unseen games planned for Sega Dreamcast.
The graphic shown in these early screenshots (published in various French magazines such as “Gameplay RPG” #31 in july/august 2001, “Dreamzone” #25 in June/July 2001 and “Joypad” #113 in November 2001) was good for its time, but most of the models and environments were pre-rendered and it’s currently unknown how much of the game was really in a playable state.
Kyskrew was in development by Dragonhydre (later renamed Crystal Dream), a small independent French team that was disbanded just after the cancellation of their project in mid 2002. It seems that Dragonhydre was composed of 12 members (with age ranging from 16 to 23 years-old) who meet in various French gaming forums and decided to organize a development team to create their own game.
In an interview published on Dream-Emu a former member of Dragonhydre said that their plan was to release the game for free on their website, to let people to download the ISO and play it on their Dreamcast and PC.
The plot of Kyskrew involved the Goddess of Love and Creation – Eloina – who imprisoned her arch-enemy, the God of Hate – Gainer. Unfortunately a fragment of Gainer’s tainted soul would escape from his prison and reincarnate in a human being to take revenge and destroy the world.
It seems Kyskrew would have featured different combat mechanics, they wanted to use real-time combat system to fight normal enemies through levels but then combat would became turn-based during boss fights. Several character classes were planned to play the game with, including knights, magicians, and thieves. There was also an internal clock system that alternated the game time between night and day, a feature that have since become a standard in many modern RPGs including Elder Scrolls and Fable.
The world of Kyskrew also appears to have been particularly large, with 5 continents that included a good number of cities and dungeons. It was reported by the project’s director that the game would have had over 40 hours of gameplay.
As the Dreamcast was near the end of its life-cycle, in late 2001 Dragonhydre decided to move the game to Playstation 2, plus adding a GBA version too. It’s hard to say how much work was really put into these consoles, as the team was soon disbanded.
In 2004 another former member of Dragonhydre wrote a few pots on the Yaronet forums, revealing that they had many internal problems: work done on the game was not very good, team members keep changing during development and even early deadlines continued to be postponed, until the cancellation of the project.
A few tech-demo videos were once available on their official website, but unfortunately it seems Archive.org doesn’t have the files anymore. If you know someone who worked on this game who could still have some footage saved, please let us know!
Article by Blake Lynch & monokoma, thanks to Isatis_Angel for the scans and contribution!
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