Adventure games that never were (warning: may make you cry)
 

Around three years ago an American university funded group called Vinayak4D Games was working on a first person adventure called Atma: Mythic Light of India. It was to tell an ancient story about a Hindu god who, along with his wife, was wrongly cast out of heaven by an evil, deceitful god. You were to play the wife and had to perform good deeds and solve all these cypher based puzzles in order to save your husband and restore him to his rightful place.

http://image.com.com/gamespot/images...a_thumb003.jpg http://image.com.com/gamespot/images...a_thumb004.jpg
Click for large. More screens here.

Vinayak was using the Unreal Warfare engine (yeah, the same one that powers Unreal Tournament 2003), and it would have been the first game launched using that engine, too, if they hadn't run out of money and couldn't find a backer. There were already screenshots. It looked awesome. :frown:

I was looking forward to this one because of its Hindu mythology and because it looked sooooo gorgeous.

Do you know of a game you were breathlessly waiting for, only to discover it being cancelled? And also, why were you so excited over it?

I figured I wouldn't bring up S&M: Freelance Police because there are already 50,000 threads mourning it. :D

I couldn't really be waiting for the game, because I was only about three years old back then.

But I was really surprised, and kind of sad when I heard, that there was supposed to be a second chapter to "LOOM". (It was going to be called "Forge", I think)

But then I thought, maybe it is better this way. Maybe it keeps the feeling of "LOOM".


- :sad: :sad: :sad: :sad: :sad: :sad: :sad:

It's always the same games...

A sequel to Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis.
Simon the Sorcerer 3. (instead of 3D)
The Wheel of Time. (adventure game instead of FPS)
Warcraft adventures (or something)

:\

Well, of course GRIM FANDANGO 2!!11!11!one01 :\ :\ :\ :crazy: :frown:

Or something? OR SOMETHING?!?!?!? This is only the most tragic game cancellation of all time!

Or something... :shifty:

mag

Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans sure is my number 1 on this list. I love the Warcraft Universe and an adventure in this world could be so perfect.. ;(

Another Adventure Game that never was is Toonstruck 2. They were making that one.. You can find some pics ::Here::

:D At least I got it right...

I was really disappointed that there never was a sequel to Loom. The ending made me feel there was more story to tell.

Spoiler:

You prevent Chaos seizing the Loom but Chaos gains control of the world. Not quite the heroic world-saving finale I was expecting. I kept replaying the final scenes looking for an ending where you manage to destroy or banish Chaos.

Would it be a good thing if enthusiasts of the genre with the necessary talent wrote these missing games? In the Chalet School series by Elinor Brent-Dyer fill-in books have been written for periods missing from her original books and they have been generally well-received by fans. Would something similar work in AGs?

Star Trek - Vulcan Fury.

Or something about Vulcans anyway :)

I think my biggest personal cancellation bummer was Full Throttle: Hell on wheels. I love Sam and Max, but I love FT more :)

A couple of cancelled Lucas adventures, care of the extremely diligent people who run the Mixnmojo games database...


Full Throttle: Payback - a different Full Throttle 2 - a true adventure sequel - being made by many of the people who worked on Curse of Monkey Island. It was never announced, and got cancelled, when most of the leads on the project were fired or quit. Who knows if it was any good. I suspect that it might have been a bit suspect. How can you do a truly great Full Throttle sequel without Tim Schafer? LEC apparently thought they could, and announced a new different Full Throttle sequel, Full Throttle: Hell on Wheels, a little bit later. It was led by most of the Escape from Monkey Island team, and featured very action based gameplay. Less enticing, if you ask me. And if you ask LucasArts, apparently, since they killed Hell on Wheels too.

There wasn't just a Loom sequel in the works, Loom was supposed to be a trilogy. Back in the early, post-Monkey Island-1990's, Mike Stemmle and Sean Clark were starting work on Forge, the first sequel, centered around Rusty Nailbender, one of the blacksmith guild guys you meet in the first game. Stemmle and Clark stopped working on that project though, when the opportunity to be project leads on Sam & Max Hit the Road came up. There was a third Loom game, The Fold, which focused on one of the shepheards you encountered. I don't think it ever got off of the first couple of pitch sheets for Loom, but it was planned.

People like Fate of Atlantis and the Indy Last Crusade games, so it might (maybe?) be interesting to know that there have been at least three scrapped Indy adventure games at LucasArts that never made the light of day.

There was Indiana Jones and the Garden of Life, planned as a followup to the Last Crusade game, involving a monkey god and a guy with a mechanical arm. Somehow scraps of this design were reformed to create Fate of Atlantis.

There's also Indiana Jones and the Spear of Destiny, which never came to be.

And finally, Indiana Jones and the Iron Phoneix, which died a thousand deaths for a thousand different reasons. Some artists wanted to make it uniquely styled with an art deco look reminiscent of Batman the Animated Series, while some wanted it so realistic they were angling for FMV cutscenes (without Harrison Ford!). "The final blow came when company president Jack Sorensen learned from LEC distributors in Germany that the game could not be sold there. German censorship laws prohibited the sale of any toys (including PC games) which explicitly portrayed Nazis. Earlier Indy games got away with being sold there by removing all swastikas and all references to Hitler. But since resurrected Nazi soldiers were an integral part of Iron Phoenix's story, it would have to be banned outright instead of being censored and sold."

There was another LucasArts SCUMM game that never made the light of day - a Star Wars based adventure. Not much is known about it other than you played as... wait for it... C-3PO. :crazy:

From all reports it sounds like the world is a better place for not having it completed and released.

Oh, and what of Ron Gilbert's Monkey Island 3 - another game that never was?

Are you sure? I thought I heard that it was supposed to be a lot more action based than the original at least. :shifty:

I was in a project for the fan game "Loom 2: Chaos Returns" (Now it is called "The Years of Chaos".) I was to translate it into english.

I mailed the leader of the project today, to ask if the project is still running. Apparently, the artists left the team, so they have to re-do all the artwork.


In case anybody is interested, here is the thread with the details. (Not only Erwin can link to Adventuredevelopers :P )

I mean to say: Artists! Help!


- :) :) :) :) :) :) :)

Gabriel Knight 4...the hint about it on Grace's computer made my mouth water in anticipation...

Another Zork game I would've loved to play!

The 7th Guest 3: The Collector has never seen the light of day....that trailer was eerie!

LSL 8: Lust in Space, Space Quest 7, the short-lived new Jane Jensen project...

(wanders away to find his Crying Towel)

You were 3 years old in 2001??

Now that would have been an interesting game. I had no idea that they were planning such a game. I've always wanted to play a game based on Hindu mythology, as I am Hindu. A game based on Krishna, or the Mahabharata war, the Ramayana, or something in the vein of Prince of Persia, but with a Hindu as the main character would have been really cool.

The closest thing to seeing something Hindu in a computer game was probably in Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. The vizier wore a Vishnu tilak, and I saw a carving of Ganesha, the elephant god in Hinduism in the palace, near the beginning of the game.

"Vulcan Fury." Yes. Big disappointment.

Also there was a "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" game that Southpeak Interactive was going to release on DVD.

And I had my eye on "Atma" too. I was very disappointed when I heard it was cancelled.
I hadn't heard about it for a while and was thinking "it must be near completion by now" - and instead I heard it got canned.

toonstruck 2 also was mentioned somwhere.

A sequel to loom.

Yes, she's 6 now. She's very mature for her age. What's wrong with that?

mag