In wider gaming news this week, former Epic Games developer Cliff Bleszinski, best known for his work on the Gears of War series, announced the closure of his independent studio, Boss Key Productions, following the poor performance of the team’s first game, LawBreakers. In the wake of the announcement, Bleszinski has been sharing concept art for other games that studio had hoped to work on, including two VR titles that will likely never be.
Bleszinski, a noted fan of VR and even an early investor in Oculus, has long been talking about making a game for headsets at Boss Key. In fact, this time last year the developer revealed that he was pitching a full VR game to potential investors, though noted that many were “balking” at the idea.
Here’s another one, initially planned for VR, codenamed “Rover” but was shaping up to be “DogWalkers” – DOG stood for Destructive Ordnance (on the) Ground.
Inspired by WW2 tank crews/battles/the movie Fury. 5 v 5 v 5 v 5 v 5 Zoid looking walkers fighting it out in MP. pic.twitter.com/2UkGtwk2iH
— Cliff Bleszinski (@therealcliffyb) May 15, 2018
This ‘full’ game could have been a project initially titled Rover, as Bleszinski revealed in one tweet. The game was a multiplayer combat experience inspired by World War 2 and would have players pilot giant tanks in massive 25-player battles with five players on five teams. The concept art shows machines that wouldn’t look out of place in a Star Wars movie marching into battle. Only some of the players would pilot these machines while others operate turrets fixed to it and others repair it.
“The air in the world’s fiction was toxic so any leaks on your walker you’d have to repair quick or get gas masks on etc,” Bleszinski wrote. “Rappel outside to weld legs too, toss wrenches to each other etc…”
Next up is a decidedly more friendly-looking game called Donuts, which Bleszinski described as a spiritual successor to classic Atari game, Toobin. Players are cast as animals that race downstream on rubber rings. The developer labeled it as Mario Kart on water.
Here’s the silly/fun one – basically a VR spiritual sequel to Toobin, only everyone are animals – and a way to fight Seasonal Affection Disorder. (Mario Kart on water with animals in VR.)
Called “Donuts.” pic.twitter.com/wNKef9QsS4
— Cliff Bleszinski (@therealcliffyb) May 15, 2018
More art. pic.twitter.com/R9I64nDJKC
— Cliff Bleszinski (@therealcliffyb) May 15, 2018
Sadly it looks like these games will never come to fruition. Rover in particular sounds like something that could have really worked in VR. Bleszinski is planning to take some time off from development following Boss Keys’ closure but, as he noted on Twitter, many of these ideas were worked on by the larger team. Perhaps some of these ideas could live on in the future, then.
Tagged with: Cliff Bleszinski
Source: Cliff Bleszinski Shares Concept Art For Two VR Games From LawBreakers Dev
