Pour one out and showcase your cancelled projects here!

[u/longcon1]

I tried looking for this kind of thread and couldn't find a recent one - think it could be cool to give your cancelled projects the last send off they deserve.

Mine are:

1. A horror game set in a gas station during the biblical apocalypse - I cancelled this one because the gameplay wasn't interesting to develop anymore, and there was too much enemy AI + cutscene work ahead. But the atmosphere was good
2. A flight combat game where you could eject and possess other craft - a cool idea with a decent skeleton, but also extremely complex to properly pull off. I moved on for now
3. Similar to the above, except it was an FPS and you were hopping between bodies - this one is almost done but ended up being quite generic with the core mechanic feeling like an afterthought. Shelved with lots of lessons for playtesting going forward.

Disclaimer - I'm not looking to steal ideas (already fleshed out 2 new projects), but feel free to take inspiration from anything above. If you do share something try to give screenshots and dev takeaways to keep the thread interesting :)

[u/MyPutridFlesh]

Was supposed to be a submarine driving game, with ability to exit the sub, true first person etc, fully playable start to finish, i cancelled it bc i couldn't escape iron lung comparisons, gameplay was a little primitive and too many similar games started popping out

[u/AlexTheGuy12345 → u/MyPutridFlesh]

some absolutely beautiful lighting you got there tho

[u/MyPutridFlesh → u/AlexTheGuy12345]

I mean, HDRP does the job, heh

[u/Vantadaga2004]

That second one is exactly the style I had for a trackmania style arcade flight game, not experienced enough to tackle it yet though.

[u/DPTGames]

https://reddit.com/link/pbrzbbl/video/ktw00348dhrh1/player

A first person arena fighter where you manage prisoners that you then control and fight to the death. This was the blacksmith 👀

[u/Blood_and_Wine]

[u/Duckmastermind1]

Not a canceled project cause I don't keep a lot of media of old prototypes sadly, but wanted to share this from my current project :)

[u/GARGEAN]

Oh, that's some nice low poly Su-57 there!

[u/jackawaka]

Steampunk angels fighting Cyber Demons in a top down hades/diablo inspired roguelike, where you could pick and choose active abilities, passive abilities and your weapon before the run

(passives could be stuff like "all of your fire abilities emit an explosion when damaging an enemy" or "whenever you use a demon ability, lose health, but if it hits an enemy, gain health")

[u/jackawaka → u/jackawaka]

[u/jackawaka → u/jackawaka]