Renegade Kid

Cult County (Renegade Kid) [Cancelled – 3DS, Wii U, PS3, PSVita, PC]

Cult County is a cancelled psychological horror game that was in development by Renegade Kid around 2013, originally announced for Nintendo 3DS at PAX 2013 and later also planned for PS4, PS3, PSVita, Wii U, PC, and Xbox One when they unsuccessfully tried to fund the game on Kickstarter. Their plan for the project was to create an episodic horror tale, something like “The Walking Dead meets Silent Hill 2 from a first-person perspective”.

The team is mostly known for cult-classic Nintendo DS horror titles such as Dementium: The Ward and Moon, plus fun platforming adventures such as Mutant Mudds and Xeodrifter. While they always showed skills and love for Nintendo consoles, their games never sold much unfortunately.

Some details about Cult County can still be read on their Kickstarter campaign page, which raised just  $ 46.736 of their $ 580.000 goal:

“Cult County is an all-new first-person survival horror game that blends the episodic story-telling of The Walking Dead with the classic tension-filled exploration and action of Silent Hill and Resident Evil, presenting an opportunity for fans to help a veteran team produce a new experience that is fresh, exciting, and scary!

Rebirth of the survival horror FPS genre, crafted with fan input.
Story-driven gameplay, featuring memorable character interactions.
Small West Texas town filled with tension, mystery, and scares.
Vulnerable and personalized melee and firearm combat.
Varied cast of creepy enemy encounters and devious boss battles.

You assume the role of Gavin Mellick, whose mother has fallen deathly ill. Unable to reach your older sister, Alissa, by phone you drive the 6 hours across Texas to visit her in person and share the sad news. You return to the small town where you spent your summers as a child with Alissa, at your late aunt’s house. There is a particularly savage dust storm rolling in when you arrive.

Unable to locate your sister, you ask some of the locals for help. You quickly learn about their suspicions of a cultish group that recently moved into town, and the unexpected suicide of Father Pearce. The locals offer very little help finding your sister, and it isn’t long before your search takes an unexpected dark turn, leading you down a road of no return.

You are alone. You are unarmed. You see strange “people” linger on the edge of the dust storm, who seem to be watching your every move. But, as soon as you turn your head to face them, they disappear. Who are they? Where do they go? What do they want?

As you explore deeper into the town, searching for any clues that might lead to your sister, you meet various town folk who offer their own anecdotes on what the “people” might be. Some claim they are just your imagination, and some say they are part of the new cultish group who recently moved into town. One person even goes as far to name them “Dust Devils“!”

With no support on Kickstarter, Renegade Kid possibly tried to find a publisher for Cult County, but without success. After releasing Moon Chronicles and Dementium Remastered on Nintendo 3DS, in August 2016 Renegade Kid announced that it was shutting down. It’s currently unknown if Cult County could be resurrected in the future, but if so we could see it from Infitizmo, the new team created by former Renegade Kid cofounder Gregg Hargrove.

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Dementium 2 [Tech Demo – DS]

Dementium 2 is a FPS developed by Renegade Kid and released for DS in 2010. Below we can see some screenshots and a video of a tech demo that was created before the actual development of the game started. Gregg Hargrove briefly talked about it in the Renegade Kid board:

I wanted to comment on how amazed I am that anyone was even able to find any info on the original “Village” demo that became D2. Wow!

I also wanted to give a shout out to the artist that helped me develop that demo, Erik McKenney, who sadly was not able to stay on with us past the demo. Times were crazy and we didn’t know where what was going to happen so we lost a great artist to a more stable company. D2 would have been that much better if we could have kept him on.

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Maximillian and the Rise of the Mutant Mudds [Cancelled – DS]

Mutant Mudds is a 2d platformer developed by Renegade Kid and released for 3DS and PC in 2012.  Originally, as you can see from the video and the screenshots below, the game was going to be a 3D third-person shooter. A  short demo made in two weeks  that used a modified version of Moon engine was in fact shown to IGN at e3 2009.

However, Renegade Kid didn’t succeed in finding a publisher, and so they tried to release it on DSiWare in 2010. That failed too, but in 2011 the developers transformed Mutant Mudds in a 2D side-scroller and decided to publish it themselves on the 3DS eshop.

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Son of the Dragon [Wii – Cancelled]

Son of the Dragon is a cancelled action adventure that was in development by Renegade Kid and that would have been published by Gamecock for the Nintendo Wii. Sadly when Gamecock had to close down for economic issues, Renegade Kid was not able to find another publisher and the project had to be canned. Only few concept arts were released and it seems that Son of the Dragon was still in early development when it was cancelled. As we can read from an interview with Renegade Kid co-founder Jools Watsham on 1UP:

JW: Son of the Dragon was a third-person action adventure title set in a heavily stylized 15th century. You were Dracula. Something happened to you, which striped you of your ability to use your awesome powers. A quick description of it is a “good” 3D Castlevania where you are Dracula, with a focus on responsive combat, solid gameplay camera, light RPG elements, and a rich world of wickedly diverse landscapes, enemies, player weapons, and abilities. […]

JW: We spent many months developing the idea with a team of very experienced and dedicated individuals. The art team created loads of superb concept images for the player character, enemies, bosses, and environment locations. The design group created a game design document that quickly grew to over 100 pages, and detailed player abilities, damage types, enemy AI, items, accessories, level designs, currency, and many other details. It was truly inspired and exciting. We were considering licensing an engine for development, and the same day we had assets loaded into the engine, the hammer came down and the project was canceled. It was a bittersweet day.

Thanks to Celine for the contribution!

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