Dead Unity is a cancelled futuristic Sci-Fi Action/Survival Horror game that was in development from 1996 to 1998 by Aramat Productions and would have been published by THQ for the PC and the Playstation. According to former developers, the gameplay was somewhat of a “sci-fi Resident Evil clone“.
The game placed the player as an enhanced human, named Works, in the city of Unity who has to survive from deadly cyborgs and robots from a computer generated Artificial Intelligence called Global Mediation Machine who went berserk.
Dead Unity was officially announced in February 1997 by THQ, following a deal with Aramat Productions, as we can read on IGN:
T*HQ announced Friday that it has signed an agreement with entertainment software developer, Aramat Productions Inc., to develop and publish Dead Unity, a 3-D science-fiction adventure game.
The game is promised to be an immersive, real-time 3D adventure game, set in alternate universe.
Dead Unity should be released in first quarter, 1998.
Further details were shared, again by THQ, at E3 of the same year during the publisher’s line-up announcement:
Dead Unity™ – For the Sony PlayStation, PC CD-ROM, scheduled to be launched 1998 – A 3-D rendered graphic adventure that submerges players in an alternate reality where they assume the identity of the artificially enhanced human, Works, as he attempts to power down the massive computer core of the global mediation machine.
In October 1997, an issue from Computer Games Strategy Plus detailed features and background about the project:
(…) You play Works, an “artificially enhanced human” who must power down the immense computer core of an unfathomable global mediation machine. In an alternate reality, you will face 9-foot tall metal giants called Fleshies, as well as the masterful and diabolical core of the computer itself, in a blowout showdown shoot-em up. Works may choose from over 100 weapons and enhancements that he may interchange at the touch of an ARM (Automatic Reconfigurable Munitions). That’s over 100 ways to slice, dice, maim, mutilate, impale, mangle and cripple over 30 original enemy characters. Based upon the player’s choices, there are multiple story outcomes. The game utilizes a “unity-engine” for 3-D movement through over 400 rendered scenes including environments such as an underground dam, a robot assembly plant carved out of a mountain and a 250 story skyscraper. It also features dynamically changing environments, such as breaking windows, bullet holes in walls and day to night lighting shifts.
After that, Dead Unity didn’t reappear until May 1998 for another THQ’s line-up announcement:
“Dead UnityÔ “ The new standard in real-time, 3D rendered graphic adventures, “Dead Unity” immerses players in a futuristic world of fast-paced action and hair-raising suspense with its extremely detailed story, enthralling characters, riveting game play and unsurpassed graphic quality. (Scheduled for launch in October 1998.)
The issue from August 1998 of Playstation Magazine was the last one in which the game was mentioned before totally disappearing from the surface for years.
In August 2010, the blog of CanOfTheRelics, shared two videos of the game alongside development stories from an Aramat’s anonymous ex-developer:
There are no Playable demos floating around. All the screenshots you seen in magazine ads, THQ promos…they were all mock ups. I designed the story for the project which was very complex, I was also Art Director and eventually producer on it before THQ pulled the plug with it. Long story short, Aramat was a new company and we had some really green programmers. It took over a year just to get a simple animation exporter out of them let alone AI, physics, game logic, etc…
The first E3 we put together that Video Demo that ran on monitors. The second year we “almost” had something remotely playable…but the owner of the company derailed my efforts to get actual game play in place in favor of having animated texture overlays to make spinning fans on screen and pretty much single handedly destroyed our chances with salvaging our relationship with THQ. The demo was full of bugs and you couldn’t even play it.
After I got back from E3 that year, I washed my hands of the project and started working on Arch Gothic. I put together a technology demo for it to show the rest of the company how it was done. With that technology they did manage to finish a working build for Dead Unity with a character traversing through a few rooms with weapons and some rudimentary AI…but it was too little too late. THQ pulled funding for the project and the company went under. Myself and 2 others primary to the company at that time have what was that playable build, but there is nothing floating around. You need special hardware just to play these builds and there isn’t much there. A hall and a couple connecting rooms with some robots in them.
There was a ton of art made…that’s really all that was done on it the whole time it was in development. The engineering staff just spun their wheels through most of production.
So that’s basically the story…
Very few information seems to be available about Dead Unity’s development company. Aramat Productions was established in Wilsonville, Oregon, in June 1996 by Dane Emerson, who previously worked at Nintendo of America and Lobotomy Software. According to his LinkedIn profile, the company counted 29 people in total and worked on PC, PlayStation and Sega Saturn projects for THQ, but also Playmates Interactive. By searching for other LinkedIn profiles, we can learn that Aramat had numerous cancelled projects, most of them still totally unknown to this day. Alongside the mysterious Arch Gothic mentionned above, we could add, for instance, that Jon Ediger, who was Software Engineer for 7 months within the company, indicates having worked on a “Sony PlayStation RPG video game” until February 1999, while 3D Artist Mark Thurow and Level Artist Brian Pape indicates having worked on Decopolis, a project “essentially similar to ‘Dead Unity’” according to Thurow. Jesse Perrin who was Game & Tools Programmer during his time at Aramat worked on “Femme Fatale: a Tekken clone“. Finally, John Stenersen, who was Technical Director from 1996 to 1998 for Aramat, depicted this period as a less than complimentary memory:
Unwittingly, I was hired to manage a group of under-educated, non-professional, inexperienced programmers and high school dropouts in an attempt to create an all-female character fighting game for the Playstation (Femme Fatale). The publisher collapsed and the game was cancelled. We then focused on a DirectX 5 horror game similar to Alone in the Dark (Dead Unity) but only managed the first design milestone when it became clear the company would shutter soon.
Still according to Dane Emerson’s LinkedIn profile, it seems Aramat Productions ceased operations in December 1999. In the end, the company never produced any games.
Dead Unity images:
Decopolis images:
Video: