Puzzle

The 7th Guest: The Collector (Trilobyte Inc.) [PC – Cancelled]

 

The 7th Guest (1992) and sequel The 11th Hour (1995) are among the best quests ever. In 2003, Lunny Interactive and Rob Landeros (one of the authors of the first series) decided to bring the classics back to life and announced the third part of the game with the subtitle The Collector.

As it turned out, during the silence of the developers, the millionaire maniac and lover of luring people into houses full of traps, Henry Stauf did not give up his soul to God. He even managed to found a museum of ancient artifacts somewhere in the wilderness of Europe, after which he moved there for permanent residence. The player had to take a walk around this museum, solving puzzles made by Strauf and bypassing the traps he had set up. At first, the work went quite briskly, but by 2004 the project had quietly died.

However, Rob Landeros was not discouraged and decided to try to bring the project to release. He relaunched the studio and started two crowdfunding campaigns: one on Kickstarter (in 2013), and on Crowdtilt (in 2014). But, alas, they both failed.

Some information is taken from «Игромания» magazine, 03 (114) 2007 

Panic World (Digital Eclipse) [Dreamcast – Cancelled]

Panic World is a cancelled puzzle game that was in development by Digital Eclipse, planned to be released on Dreamcast. Gameplay was similar to Tetris Attack, Puzzle Bobble or Magical Drop, with players trying to combine 4 gems of the same colors to make them vanish, while doing combos to send magical attacks to the other player.

As far as we know Panic World was never officially announced by Digital Eclipse, but a former developer found a prototype and shared a few photos and a gameplay video on Twitter. It seems the team created an early demo before the game was canned because of the failure of the Dreamcast.

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Trickle (Metem) [Game Boy – Cancelled]

Trickle (トリックル) is a cancelled maze game that was planned by Metem for Game Boy. Single player gameplay was similar to Pac Man, with players moving around a maze in a top-down view, collecting bonuses and using power ups against enemies. When playing in VS mode (against bots or other players?) the game would change its perspective in a first-person view and you could explore the maze like in Doom, trying to find and eliminate (?) your enemies.

Previews of Trickle were published in japanese gaming magazines such as Game Boy Magazine (Vol.6) and Famitsu News (August 1990), but in the end the game seems to have vanished. For sure it was an original idea for Game Boy: if you can read Japanese and see more information in the scans below, please let us know!

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Brain Bender (Migraine) [NES – Cancelled]

Brain Bender (AKA Migraine) is a puzzle game that was in development for the Nintendo Famicom / NES. Players had to move mirrors to deflect laser beams in the right order. A single screenshot of this lost game was found in a japanese magazine, but not much is known about it. Gremlin Interactive developed a Game Boy version that was released in 1991, but we are not sure if it’s the same game nor if Gremlin was also working on the NES edition.

Thanks to Celine for the contribution! 

Meiro Daikatsugeki Pata Pata Panic [NES / Famicom – Cancelled]

Meiro Daikatsugeki Pata Pata Panic (迷路大活劇ぱたぱたパニック) is a cancelled puzzle game that was in development by Varie Corporation for Nintendo Famicom / NES. It’s quite an obscure lost game and there’s no information about it online, but a promotional poster was sold sometime ago on Yahoo Auction Japan, so at least we can see artwork and some tiny screenshots. Varie officially announced the cancellation of their game in Famitsu magazine (December 22, 1989).

If you can find something else on Meiro Daikatsugeki Pata Pata Panic in old japanese magazines, please let us know!