41
votes
Are there any games that had their development abandoned that you followed where you wish that continued/completed development?
For this post I was thinking of games more along the lines of an early access title that was abandoned or had a 1.0 release announced when it was not feature complete or still had bugs/issues that were never addressed. If you feel like a live service/MMO game that has shut down should have kept going, feel free to share it as well.
I will always be sad over what happened with Kerbal Space Program 2. The two greatest trailers for a video game ever, but the game itself is an abandoned husk, light-years away from where it could have been.
I know what you mean. I just wanted to check are, are you aware of Kitten Space Agency?
It's Dean Hall's (DayZ) game studio and he got together an incredible team of people. Many of which worked on KSP, KSP2 and/or popular mods. Fillipe is on the project too as an advisor.
Anyway, it looks really hopeful that it will eventually live up to KSP2. Though I would warn to read about Dean's... Interesting business model. He has some beef with Valve and Steam as a platform. Personally I think some of his beef is valid but some is clearly personal. And he's trying something new to make the game as easy to play and DRM free as possible. Which is a really cool idea, but there's been a lot of criticism around it.
I'm very hopeful about KSA. I even applied for a job working on it but they never got back to me lol.
I'm excited about it, they've got a lot of the most prolific modders and a few devs from KSP on board and everything looks really good thus far. I'm a huge fan of Stationeers as well and they've done such a good job with continuing development there, so I hope KSA gets the same treatment.
Is it the same team doing stationeers? Havent heard of that game but looks decent.
The same studio, different team. There is a third team that provides the "engine" that both Stationeers and KSA use.
It's quite interesting, they call it BRUTAL and it's essentially an API wrapper around Vulken, rather than a game engine.
Anything with Dean's name tied to it is immediately questionable. He over hypes and over markets everything. To this day, DayZ is still trying to catch up to some of what he originally committed to with it.
Are you talking about the game DayZ or the mod DayZ?
I'm also somewhat critical of Dean's decisions and ways of working, but I listened to him in a few interviews where he talked about his past and his philosophy.
His days at Bohemian making DayZ the game sounded like torture, he had a horrible time and he ended up leaving after a lot of burn out.
Through all that though, he does sound like a guy who just likes video games and wants to make cool stuff that big studios aren't willing to do. His employees seem to like working at his studio, their games have slowly got better over time in a lot of ways and he has some good ideas in my opinion.
But he has made a lot of mistakes and he's on the verge of quiting from what he said in a recent interview. I don't personally put him on a pedestal, he's so far probably put in more neutral or negative input to the community than good, but it sounds like he wants something better and he's trying.
So I dunno, I'd say give him some slack. He just seems like a pretty normal dude who got a shit load of money from a dumb idea he had to me to be honest. A lot of people would say and do dumb shit after that.
Ok, if anyone is interested about this but not enough to do the research themselves, here is what I could get from 10 min of reading:
Business model:
created his own launcher/platform (ahwoo) to bypass Steam for KSA, the game is completely free with no DRM (and no online checks), funded by voluntary community contributions, native linux support.
Beef with Valve:
He argues Valve "does not get anywhere near enough criticism" for popularizing loot boxes and skin gambling. and he's concerned about platform dependency "What happens when Gabe [Newell] steps down, and Valve inevitably becomes enshittified?"
People are wary of him because:
Overall I don't see any real red flags, and most people here would probably somewhat resonate with his ideas. Just try out KSA and give however much it's worth to you after you're done.
This is maybe only tangentially related to your question, but it is the first that popped into my head: Cube World. (There was an eventual release, but lots of radio-silence during development / after the alpha release).
There was an alpha released in 2013, and then had sparse updates from the dev until an actual release in 2019, but there was a lot of radio silence during that time.
I think I did have an alpha key and enjoyed it then, I don’t know that I ever played the fully “released” version. It was definitely a victim of its own hype-train, in that it had more hype than the sole developer (at the start, I think his Wife did officially join as a dev at some point) could possibly deliver on.
Almost like an early version of Silksong hype, but with even less (if that’s possible) communication from the developer. (Also, much less of a following, but an equally rabid fanbase from the few fans there were).
Oh man I remember the hype around Cube World, especially how it looked. At the time it was introduced in 2013 the 3D voxel art style was still somewhat unique to Minecraft, and hadn't seen much wider use. By 2019 we had plenty of similar looking games, and now in 2026 it's just another art style in the industry.
Thinking about it, it actually reminds me a lot of Veloren, which is a similar game with a similar art style, but developed by its community as free and open source.
I hadn't heard of this game, so I was expecting this cube world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cube_World_(toy)
I guess they don't fit your post description, but...
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 3
Star Wars: Battlefront 3
Star Wars 1313
And then the PSVR game RIGS: Mechanized Combat League was technically fully released but it had a limited singleplayer mode and an incredible multiplayer mode. They had a year of free updates announced to provide basically expert versions of the mechs, but the Guerilla Games studio got shut down and all work on the game was halted. That meant that the small but dedicated community just completely stopped playing the game overnight because despite only ever adding content, the game was now less complete than at launch. It was fun enough that the unbalanced mechs could tide you over until the next update...but too unbalanced to be viable in the long term.
I may have been too restrictive on my initial topic, I didn't stop to think about projects that didn't see the light of day.
We'll see if KotoR 3 ever comes, but I still need to do a play through of the first two games as an adult. I've installed it several times but always have something come up.
KotOR 3 is never coming. Never say never but it's been 22 years since 2 and the only current property that exists within that continuity (the George Lucas, pre-Disney one) is the MMO The Old Republic, which has already concluded the Revan story, so it's unlikely a competing game will be developed, even if it would sell well.
I didn't know that The Old Republic included a conclusion to the Revan story! I played it for a bit after it came out and some more later on with my brother, but we didn't have time to keep playing.
Sounds like I'll need to head over to give it a go if it is still running when I finally get around to beating the KotoR, thanks for sharing that!
Ehhhh I haven't played that part of the game (still), but the Revan/TOR novel had perhaps the worst story of any novel I've ever read, so I wouldn't jump into the game solely because of that.
Star Wars 1313 really stings because from what I had heard it was really far in its development cycle before Disney acquired Lucas Films. And then because they hate money, mothballed Lucas Arts thus cancelling Star Wars 1313 and the other games that they were working on. And for Battlefront 3, you can find some playable maps on moddb that got leaked online awhile ago, that some modders had ported* to Battlefront 2 and there were some really interesting ideas that they were working on and introduced some new characters into Star Wars before they were introduced in Elite Squadron.
Another Star Wars game that never got to see the light of day was the sequel to Republic Commando, Imperial Commando.
*the maps are very unstable to play on
I love how companies like Disney and Nintendo are always either the greediest companies in the world or just hate money, depending on who you talk to and when.
I think it stims from the fact that they want to control more IPs or are more willingly to shutdown fans that make fan projects or sue companies that have a slightly similar IP or similar mechanics and amending their patents to cover this during the lawsuit. And that they make absolutely mindboggling stupid decisions with the IPs, in the eyes of the fans of the IPs, that they have control over. Like mothballing LucasArts, so that they can outsource the game development/publishing to other companies, thus cancelling games that were well into their development. Or just straight up just sit on IPs and do nothing with them.
Late to the thread, but chiming in to second Star Wars Battlefront 3. It would have been nice to have that game in 2008-2010 ish as expected instead of the not-quite-the-same reboots we actually got.
The sequel to Hypnospace Outlaw, Dreamsettler (scope creep and bad finances) and the sequel to Night in the Woods, Revenant Hill (developer health issues, to put it lightly).
That weird space game Notch toyed around with for a while before coming down with acute afluenzia was kinda cool too.
I never know Dreamsettler was canceled. Was looking forward to that game
this is how I find our Dreamsettler has been cancelled. What a shame. I didn't know a secret to Night in the Woods was ever even planned tbqh.
The game that got me thinking about this post is Objects in Space. I'll admit to pirating it to try it out as there was no demo available, and I absolutely loved the atmosphere and look of the game. I played an hour and decided I wanted to pick the game up so uninstalled it and did a bit of looking in to it only to discover that the developers put a 1.0 label on the game and left it as is with features missing and bugs still in place.
The game plays almost like a submarine sim, with 2D newtonian physics, but you're in deep space and traveling in between systems in a region of space where future extra solar colony was supposed to create a giant space travel gate to connect back to Earth's solar system and never did. The atmosphere and ambiance are amazing, and I really liked the modem-punk aesthetic. There is also the need to swap components out of different systems to perform repairs on your ship.
There is limited mod support and so much potential in this game as there is no other game I've seen that scratches this exact itch. The only game that I've played so far that felt somewhat similar is Ostranauts, but that wasn't exactly what I was looking for. I do still plan to pay the few bucks to grab a copy of the game eventually as it goes on frequent deep discounts, and I've seen people mentioning being able to get ~30-50 hours of enjoyable game play out of what is there.
One of the things that I noticed when I did my short play session was some QoL features that could address some UI annoyances I ran in to. If anyone is interested and wants to try it out, I have a copy of the game manual that I found awhile ago when I got interested in the game and did some digging. IIRC the manual was hosted on their website which was taken down even then, and I had to use the Wayback Machine to get a copy.
There's a decompilation project that hasn't had any progress in a long while as the guy working on it doesn't have the time or knowledge to make progress: https://github.com/Voidless7125/OIS-Decompile
There was talk of trying to get it open sourced, but it looks like that didn't end up going anywhere or there have been no updates on it: https://steamcommunity.com/app/824070/discussions/0/3811782223868181107/
I also just found out while looking for the above links that a community member announced their own spiritual successor: https://steamcommunity.com/app/824070/discussions/0/1631916887493466858/?ctp=3#c693125596439404256
Link to their substack: https://inthevoidgame.substack.com/
Spacebase DF9 would have been nice to see finished. Maybe it would have been successful enough that DoubleFine wouldn't have had to sell out to MS.
At least Space Haven turned out pretty good!
The obvious example to me is Star Citizen. It technically hasn't been abandoned, but it has been in development for so long with so little to show with various early access versions, etc, that I think it fits.
I backed the Kickstarter in apparently 2012? I mean, I guess that's the joke. I knew it was a long time ago, but 14 years ago with still no end in sight and they are selling $6000 ships? I was really excited to play the game 14 years ago but now I just usually forget about it. Hilariously you can go back and look at the Kickstarter where they estimated the game would be finished in two years, November 2014. I think I remember joining a clan and being hyped. Who knows. I'm not even sure how I would claim my Kickstarter version of the game now. Has it already happened? Do I need to wait until the game actually comes out? I don't even really care at this point. My interests and time are not the same as they were 14 years ago.
...full throttle absolutely needed no sequel, but i would have liked to play another game with father torque...
https://www-lucasdelirium-it.translate.goog/hellonwheels.php?_x_tr_sl=it&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VshQXSucdkQ
I saw a trailer over a decade ago for Little Devil Inside, and was immediately charmed by the artstyle and animations, but it seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth for a while after that. Since then there's been like one or two more trailers a few years in between but the game is definitely in development hell and I'm surprised it hasn't been cancelled already.
As the Sonic guy, Sonic Xtreme (cancelled game for the Saturn). The fish-eye view camera lives rent-free in my mind. Logically it doesn't seem possible to make it a very good game, but it just looks so cool.
Sidebar: this prompted me to look up the footage of it on YouTube again. The video is 20 years old, first time I've seen that on a video.
I wonder too, though that NiGHTS engine was a weird creature. Running in circles would have been such an odd way to play a Sonic game, though I probably would have been up for it. I played 3D blast on the Saturn then played its soundtrack on my CD player over and over and over
I backed Birth of Civilizations on kickstarter back in 2019. I still think the premise is cool but in hindsight it was pretty ambitious. They renamed to Birth of Cultures in 2024 and allegedly resumed development, however I haven’t heard a peep since.
Speaking of failed Kickstarter games - mine is Chronicles of Elyria. Backed and unfortunately was dumb enough to invest more money post-Kickstarter into a product that ultimately wound up being absolute vapourware.
Jeromy (Caspian), if for some reason you got a Tildes invite and read this, please respond - you're either a piece of shit con artist or a narcissistic dev who bit off more than he could chew and can't admit you're at fault.
Your tale with Birth of Civilizations sounds very very similar to mine - cool concept but little/nothing to show. I probably dodged that bullet by virtue of just tuning out all Kickstarter game announcements.
I also backed CoE back in 2016. I unsubscribed from the updates because I knew it was never actually going to happen, but I just went over and looked at the page. It looks like the last update was in 2023.
It looks like their site is still up, but most of the pages are "under development", and there's no more forum! It looks like they have a Discord, I wonder if it's dead over there...
Yeah I saw a video detailing the whole chronicle awhile ago and it reminded me that it existed. There's probably a court order or legal loophole that says if he completely abandons it, then he's in trouble which is why he fired everybody and became the sole dev. But yeah, I remember telling myself when they released those absolute garbage "state of play" videos that it probably wasn't gonna happen.
I was curious and looked on the subreddit. I guess there was an attempt at a class action lawsuit, but it got dismissed because when backing something on kickstarter it's considered a donation or a gift, and therefore there's no guarantee of services.
I don't know about the people who paid in after the kickstarter, because I do remember back in 2018 or something they did a second round of fundraising directly through their website. I bet he cooked something into the terms and conditions about how there's no guarantee they'll deliver and they waive all legal rights. Ah well.
Paradox Interactive, the major
playercompany, in the GSG niche of strategy, allowed a team of modders or something to try and produce a new spin-off into an era that they themselves haven't touched:East vs West was supposed to be a Cold War Grand Strategy Game, theoretically then emphasizing those elements which made the Cold War more defined, do to speak, than previous more morally flexible periods.
There's a leaked alpha build somewhere, but for reasons (iirc insufficient progress given investment or something along those lines) it was shuttered and never completed.
StarCraft Ghost.
I was so excited for that game when I was a kid. Star Craft and Goldeneye were sacred in my household and Ghost was supposed to be the combination of the two.
I wish we got more sequels to all the old Sierra games. Space quest, quest for glory, king’s quest … all lots of fun. I know space quest 7 in particular was deep in development when they shut down.
I Just want to be Single is a very silly premise for a game. It seems like it was overly ambitious and the kickstarter money has run out.
0x10c is the one that comes to mind for me. I first discovered Minecraft in 2011 or 2012, so hearing about Notch’s next game project was pretty exciting. Then add the fact that it was a space sim centered around a virtual computer that you were supposed to be able to program yourself, and the burgeoning computer nerd I was ended up insanely excited. Always was so disappointed that nothing came from it, but I suppose it was a pretty ambitious project.
I think I’m just susceptible to his style of game design, though. I discovered Wurm Online/Unlimited a few years back and shouldn’t have been nearly as surprised as I was that Notch was (partially) behind such a wildly tedious kind of game.
I haven't thought about that in a long time. I remember thinking that sounded awesome myself and then the development slowly stopping.
I heard Notch was considering working on a "Minecraft 2" awhile ago, so I wonder if anything will come from that.
Edit: After writing that I went to take a look if any progress had been made on that, but it looks like he decided to make a different game instead.
I remember that within a few days of releasing a specification for the virtual machine, people had made assemblers, Forth environments, Pascals, C compilers and so on for it.
I even have a DCPU-16 T-shirt. A hand-me-down from a flatmate, though; I was hyped but not quite that hyped about it.
Objects in Space was super cool and interesting. I loved what I played of it ages ago and really seemed promising. I ended up putting it down because I wanted to wait for a full release, but when I checked back in on it, it became evident that it was abandoned and nothing further would be happening with it.
I hadn't refreshed to see your comment, but I just added my own comment as that was the game that got me thinking to make that post!
Someone announced a spiritual successor, so you could consider checking that out: https://inthevoidgame.substack.com/
Thanks, I'll have to take a look at that. It was such an interesting game, I'd love to see something like it.
Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2 was eventually released, but, before the version we got, there was another version being developed by Hardsuit Labs. The original Bloodlines 1 was a 3D CRPG, buggy to hell and back, but beloved and eventually fan-patched into something that mostly worked.
The sequel we got is apparently some kind of cinematic action game. I haven't actually played it because the reports about its nature were just too disappointing after years of waiting for its release. The sequel Hardsuit Labs was developing was intended to follow more closely in the footsteps of the original, including the RPG trappings.
Development was purportedly troubled, and Paradox pulled Hardsuit Labs off the project, handing it over to The Chinese Room who scrapped most of what was there and built the sequel we got instead. I am not so deluded as to believe that the original sequel would have been an incredible game. Maybe it too wouldn't have been a worthy successor for one reason or another. Despite that, I would have rather seen a failed game that had ambitions to be a true successor than the scaled-back low-ambition middling sequel masquerading (😉) around in the pale peeled-off skin of its predecessor.
That first person shooter game of Stargate sg-1 that was cancelled in the early 00s. Apparently it was in a playable alpha state and everything.
Megaman Legends 3 There was a prototype close to being completed and released, but they scrapped the whole project.
Aw, man.
I'm still disappointed that Fez 2 was cancelled. I remember there was a theory that one of the puzzles in the original Fez was designed to be unsolvable until you played Fez 2 and solved it in the future, and I always thought that was kinda brilliant.
Catacomb Kids is a brutal roguelike dungeon platformer that was in Early Access and under active development by solo developer FourBitFriday for more than a decade before quietly being abandoned. The dev, real name Tyriq Plummer, went on to heavily contribute to UFO 50, so it's hard to hold it against him, but Catacomb Kids is such a cool, interesting game. It has a bunch of systems that all interact to produce amazing gameplay moments and deaths, much like Spelunky but I'd say even better. IIRC there's enough content already included that you won't feel cheated if you buy it today, but it's a real shame it won't get that last 15% of polish to be properly completed. A comparable game that entered Early Access not that long after CK (and I'm pretty sure took quite a bit of inspiration from it) is Vagante, and that was able to hit full release in 3-4 years just by having more than one person involved.
Radio The Universe is another long-gestating project by another solo dev, 6ixe, and this one even had a proper showcase during Steam Next Fest 2023. I don't think anyone's heard anything from 6ixe since early 2024 though, and the 2012(!) Kickstarter page seems to have disappeared... so who knows if it'll ever see the light of day. The demo is absolutely glorious though.
Conker's Other Bad Day
Sequel to Conker's Bad Fur Day that wound up getting scrapped when Rare got bought out by Microsoft. I know it's pretty lowbrow humor, but it will always hold a special place in my heart as it was one of my first videogames (via emulation)
90s Racer
Rogue System was a very promising hard-ish si-fi ship simulator, akin to Digital Combat Simulator in it's intended and (partially) achieved systems depth. Unfortunately the developer suffered a traumatic brain injury and that shut the whole thing down real quick. It's got a very cult following with many people attempting to develop small spiritual successors, none of which have gone anywhere sadly.
There is another game currently in development called Alliance Space guard. And while it's not directly inspired by rogue System AFAIK, it's still the ABSOLUTE BEST simulator I've ever seen in my life. It's actively being worked on with quarterly updates on blog portion of the site and the developers Youtube Channel. If you have even the slightest passing interest in space/flight sims I highly encourage you to check out at least some of the videos.
According to the dev once he finishes implementing the optical tracking systems, he'll be able to start working on missions and eventually releasing it into early access. Personally, I can't wait to give him money lol.
Edit: A bunch of formatting changes.
The ending in Anachronox was satisfying in some ways, but the game was obviously set up for a sequel, which we never got. I'd love to see a continuation, with the same quality writing, and more modern game-play and modern graphics. It will never happen, of course.
Outcast is another action/adventure game from the late Windows 98, early XP era that deserved a sequel, or even a remake. The voxel based graphics were blurry in the original. Great music in Outcast though, some of the best.
Going back a long time, Pax Imperia: Eminent Domain was hyped like crazy and I was super excited for it to come out. When it finally did, it didn't deliver on any of the really killer stuff it had promised and was mostly a bland affair. It was pretty disappointing.
Rawbots. The Kickstarter failed then the developers had some legal drama. I was still on the forums for years.
Apparently they eventually sorta launched on Steam, but it's seemingly abandonware again.
Not sure if this fits the spirit though I think it fits the letter of the topic, but I would have really liked to have played the version of Dragon Age Dread Wolf that was more or less set up by the end of DA:I Tresspasser, and not what we got.
I'm still mad at Epic Games for canning Unreal Tournament 4 so they could go all in on Fortnite instead.
I miss a game called Leap Day from the developer Spry Fox. It was a cooperative online puzzle game, where you gathered and combined resources using little hopping automatons which would repeat their path every few minutes. Gathering resources would let you expand your territory to access new materials. You would get additional income from trading with your neighbors, so it very much encouraged cooperation. The goal was to expand enough to craft and deliver some specific resource to a target, and you would only have a few days to make it happen -- you would be checking in throughout the week, slowly spreading out and adding paths, leaving messages for the other players on your map.
The whole game ran in the browser on Spry Fox servers. It was free-to-play with paid upgrades. I suspect that few players ever actually bought the upgrades, though, because they shut the game down after like a year to work on other games. All that remains is a few YouTube clips, a wiki, some positive reviews, and a very small number of disappointed fans. I do think it left a small fingerprint on their game Cozy Grove, which shares the mechanic of placing torches to expand and re-color a frozen world.
As a little programming challenge, many years ago I re-implemented my own version of the mechanics of the game. Hopefully some day, the project will re-emerge. It was great fun.