Seeing as how Halloween is approaching, we thought it would be fun to explore a few topics related to all things scary. This brings us to the top five horror games that never made it to their release dates. While there are definitely more than five promising titles that never went gold, these are the ones that broke our hearts the most.
Number Five: Nightmare Creatures 3: Angel of Darkness
Nightmare Creatures 3: Angel of Darkness was touted as being the game changer for the series when Kalisto Entertainment first began talking about it in the early part of the 00’s. The doomed title was to feature an all new heroine with the ability to change into a beast with the aid of her raven to combat Adam Crowley’s sinister monsters. It was originally destined for release in 2003 and was to revolutionize the series with higher production values, better visuals and design. When Kalisto Entertainment filed for bankruptcy, the game was picked up by Ubisoft and the promise of a quality entry for the series grew. Unfortunately, it only stayed in development for a few more years before the execs at Ubisoft killed it off in late 2004. The most I could dig up on it is an early concept video detailing some basics of the storyline.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFbo2NMt8Lk[/embedyt]
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Number Four: inSANE
Guillermo del Toro has developed a reputation for announcing and hyping a game only to have it canceled before it ever sees the light of day. inSANE was one such title. With plenty of development time in between (around three years del Toro said), inSANE was meant to be the first title in a trilogy of survival horror games. del Toro was quoted with saying, “With this new series of video games, I want to take players to a place they have never seen before, where every single action makes them question their own senses of morality and reality.” To sweeten the deal even more, we were also promised possible tie-in movies. All we ever got to see of the ill-fated title was the 30-second premier trailer at Spike’s Video Game Awards and a few logos, though.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGofP0SOclw[/embedyt]
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Number Three: Sundown
The second of three ill-fated Guillermo del Toro projects on this list, Sundown was the first game that he announced his collaboration in. On paper, the game had a great sounding concept. del Toro told Hollywood Reporter, “Players will start as a typical person on an average day. As everything goes terribly wrong, in order to survive they must learn to form alliances with various beings and to change their role as each new challenge calls for different abilities. We want to create a real beginning, middle and the end to the game and to each set piece of the game too,” del Toro said. “I want to make some of the atmospheric elements in the game very, very scary.” Several years after its cancelation, del Toro described the game as being eerily similar to Left 4 Dead, a game that is considered a family game in his household. Unfortunately, the most we have ever seen of it was a developer diary video that was included in Rare Replay.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5cr3SCx6Dk[/embedyt]
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Number Two: Alan Wake 2
At the end of Alan Wake, I was left with the sense that it wasn’t the end of things for the series. Indeed, the developer, Remedy, always had a sequel in mind when creating Alan Wake, as head writer Sam Lake confirmed in an interview with Polygon earlier this year. Remedy had even created a working prototype of the sequel in order to pitch the idea to publishers. While most of the things included in the prototype ended up in the stand alone title Alan Wake’s American Nightmare, there never was a true sequel. In the prototype you can some of the new gameplay elements Remedy was coming up with, such as Alan’s ability to rewrite reality, but we will likely never get to experience them first hand. At least for the moment, Remedy is working on other projects, with its latest title, Quantum Break, scheduled for release early next year. The only footage available for Alan Wake 2 was the concept demo shared with the guys over at Polygon, but it was enough to bring a tear to our eyes.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQRUx-w6t4s[/embedyt]
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Number One: Silent Hills
When players first completed the PSN downloadable game P.T., they were greeted with the message that they had just completed the playable teaser for the then-unannounced Silent Hills to be developed by Kojima Productions and star catholic zombie killer, Norman Reedus. P.T. itself delivered more than enough scares and creep factor, but directors Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro promised even more in Silent Hills. Unfortunately, with Kojima’s messy break-up with Konami and their decision to move toward mobile games it’s almost certain we’ll never see what Kojima and del Toro had in mind for Silent Hills. At least we still have P.T. Oh, wait. When trouble between Konami and Kojima came to light it wasn’t long after until Silent Hills was announced as canceled and once that happened it was removed from the Playstation Store and made unable to be downloaded. Oh, the lucky few who never deleted it. It’s fortunate that we now live in a day and age where nearly everything is recorded, so we are left with plenty of video of P.T., the brief glimpse we had of a Kojima headed horror game. Below is our favorite.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ld415r-a1B0[/embedyt]
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My final comment is one that may be too obvious at this point. If you are a game developer and are wanting to produce a horror title, please choose anyone other than Guillermo del Toro to help with the creative process. While he is a spectacular filmmaker and writer, it just seems all too clear that he brings bad mojo with him whenever he sets his mind on creating a video game.
Agree with our list? Let us know if the comments section below!