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Tower Defense

Punky Doodle is a cancelled action / tower defense game that was in development by Hudson around 1993, planned to be available on coin-op arcades to “lead the industry back to the era of PacMan”. Players would have to protect pumpkins against monsters in “31 levels with more than 150 rounds”, possibly with the help of a friend in coop-mode. Its main gameplay mechanic was to draw doodles on the screen (probably with the joystick), then link a pumpkin to the line so it could move and attack enemies.

A preview of the game was published in Electronic Gaming Monthly magazine (issue 55, February 1994):

“If you’re tired of blood, shooting, fighting and all that other gore, give Punky Doodle by Sunsoft a couple of quarters. Odds are you’ll be instantly hooked by this brain teaser! Punky uses his magic crayons to stop the different meanies who attack him. Help Punky save the world’s pumpkin patches from the bad guys of the night. No shooting? No fighting? No fatalities? What kind of game is this?
It’s Punky Doodle by Sunsoft and it is as addictive as any game out there! Punky and her pal Curly are in charge of protecting Farmer Jones’ pumpkin patch. The pumpkins are under attack by the creatures of the night, and it’s up to Punky and Curly to save the pumpkin patch and the rest of the world’s pumpkin crops.
Our awesome twosome uses the Doodle Defense System by leaving a trail of doodles with their magical crayons. When a pumpkin is attached to a trail, it searches out an enemy along the trail and clobbers the enemy with a Pumpkin Power Punch! Kabam!
Even though Punky Doodle is easy to learn, it is not easy to master. There are 31 levels with more than 150 rounds. Whew, that’s a lot of playing time! Punky Doodle will definitely appeal to a broad range of age groups. The graphics, while not too complex, are clean and colorful. The sounds are also above average. All of the playing elements, including the 50 or so enemy characters, come together. Punky Doodle may look easy, but it requires a good deal of skill to play. With over 30 levels, Punky Doodle should keep you busy for a long time!

As wrote by the Los Angeles Time in 1993, a playable demo of Punky Doodle could have been featured at the Amusement and Music Operators Expo ’93:

“SunSoft of America Inc., which left the competitive arcade business to focus on home video games, is making another stab at arcades with a new game aimed at leading the industry back to the “era of PacMan.”
Though the arcade game, called “Punky Doodle,” isn’t totally nonviolent, SunSoft has high hopes that simple, back-to-basics action will make the game successful in arcades. In “Punky Doodle,” the heroes guard a pumpkin patch from alien invaders intent on destroying crops. The heroes zap the invaders into oblivion, but not in a graphically violent way, Siller said.
The game will be featured at the Amusement and Music Operators Expo ’93 at the Anaheim Convention Center later this month and is scheduled for release in December.”

In the end the game was never released in arcades, but a prototype could still be somewhere out there.

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PS Vita, Sony

Survive (bigBIG Studios) [PSVita – Cancelled]

monokoma

30-12-2021

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Survive is a cancelled zombie game that was in development by bigBIG Studios around 2009, planned to be released on the Sony PSVita. The team was mostly known for such titles as Pursuit Force and Little Deviants, but they worked on more games for Sony that were never released. Unfortunately as far as we know Survive was never officially announced by Sony, so we don’t have details about its gameplay.

By looking at the only available screenshots, we speculate it was going to be some kind of tower defense / survival adventure set in a zombie-apocalypse world. In 2012 Sony closed bigBIG Studios: some images from Survive are preserved in the gallery below to remember the existence of this lost project.

Thanks to Tonz for the contribution!

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Others, PC / MAC

Clan Wars (DMA Design) [Cancelled – PC]

monokoma

22-05-2021

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Clan Wars is a cancelled real time castle siege / tower defense strategy game set in medieval Scotland that was in development around 1998 – 1999 by DMA Design, the studio that created such popular games as Lemmings and the first Grand Theft Auto, and was later renamed to Rockstar North.

Previews for the game were published in a few gaming magazines at the time, such as Next Generation (issue 51, March 1999)

“DMA’s third title for ’99 is perhaps the most interesting (and certainly the most commercial). Still in the early stages of development, Clan Wars is a real time action / strategy game with (surprise, surprise) a unique twist. Instead of mining resources, amassing forces, and crawling around a map a la Command and Conquer (and every clone since), you simply decide whether to attack or defend for the duration of each battle.
The attacking force spends its money on building siege engines and arming its troops, and the defending force spends its resources building the best castle it can to defend itself from the attackers. Once the building period is over, the game switches to the battle, which is played out in fully scalable realtime 3D. And this time, the graphical bells and whistles are all present and accounted for.
As in Tanktics, the real joy of the game comes from manipulating the environment. Building a castle to withstand the onslaught of either a CPU or human opponent, is — quite literally — only half the battle, but it is incredibly engrossing, it’s easy to see why. iIt’s a toy that appeals to the kid in all of us — the kid who never grew up and still has a great time messing around with building blocks (or, in this case, parts of castles).”

The game was probably canned when DMA was bought by Gremlin Interactive and the team had to focus on finishing Body Harvest for the Nintendo 64. As we can read on Nostalgia Nerd’s article on the history of DMA Design:

“Riding at the peak of it’s creative output, DMA Design was then duely snapped up by British publisher Gremlin Interactive in late 1997. Impressed with DMA utilising their 3DMA graphics engine efficiently, and with plans for newer titles such as Clan Wars and Attack (both of which were cancelled) Gremlin wanted to closely collaborate with the existing DMA team and Dave Jones was quickly shuffled to the role of Creative Director.”

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