People Can Fly is a studio with an interesting history. It began withPainkiller, moved to working on theGears of Warfranchise, put outBulletstorm, worked on even more Epic Games projects, and is now developingOutridersfor Square Enix. But amidst its busy past, somewhere between the release ofPainkillerandBulletstorm, People Can Fly apparently had another project that was unfortunately canceled.Come Midnightwas a third-person action-horror game and footage of the game is now available for fans to see for themselves.
The reveal comes from People Can Fly co-founder and current creative director atThe Astronauts, Adrian Chmielarz. He describesCome Midnightas a mystery/horror game about a private detective in 1946 Boston. Chmielarz ran a poll on his Twitter account asking and if they’d like to hear aboutCome Midnight, which they answered affirmatively, so Chmielarz is posting it in lengthy blog posts ever two or three weeks.
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Come Midnightwould be a Lovecraftian tale that would be somewhere between the action ofResident Evil 5and the more realistic experience ofL.A. Noire. It would involve mysterious deaths in well-lived in mansions, murderous rednecks in a crumbling farmhouse, and huge, ancient temples unearthed with all the horrors lying wait within.
In his blogs, Chmielarz explains how People Can Fly built a pre-alpha demo for the game and pitched it to a variety of publishers. It would have been easy to get a first-person shooter greenlit after the success ofPainkiller, but this horror game was Chmielarz’s dream. Ultimately, only one publisher accepted the pitch –THQ. Development lasted over a year before THQ ended up canceling the game. Chmielarz speculates that THQ was pulling out of Europe and People Can Fly were simply located in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Nevertheless,People Can Flywas able to produce a variety of internal demo footage of Come Mightnight for THQ. Chmielarz describes how while the game may look aged now, in 2004-2005, it was a great looking game. Altogether, it’s close to 20 minutes of gameplay footage, as well as a couple more minutes of concept art and storyboarding.
Painkiller was released in 2004. Bulletstorm followed in 2011. By 2012, People Can Fly was acquired byEpic Games, with founders including Chmielarz leaving the company. It’s interesting to consider what might have happened ifCome Midnighthad been completed, if People Can Fly could have maintained its focus on narrative experiences. Of course, now both People can Fly and Chmielarz’s The Astronauts are creating their own respective types of games, which is a victory of a sort.
Come Midnightwas scheduled to release in 2007 for PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 before its cancellation by THQ.
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