Behind every great video game comes a plethora of ideas, missteps, dead ends and almost-made-its. Usually these embryonic prototypes get dumped in an archive and left to digitally rot, cursed to never see the light of day or feel the loving caress of a player's mouse. Until today....
Watch Mark and Chris dissect what it means to fail when trying to make a game, navigate the creative maze, meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same and remember; there is always light at the end of the tunnel.
If watching Mark and Chris isn't enough to get your rocks off then you can even play these — buggy, broken, well-conceived, but ultimately doomed pre-alpha builds below. We're asking for 5 bucks, but you can pay more if you want, in the virtuous knowledge that every penny we make will go to highly deserving charity, War Child.
PC only
Minimum donation $5 (War Child)
A trillion molten shards explode from the impact zone, scintillating in the light of the amber gas giant as they cool. With the enemy battlecruiser neutralised, your attention turns to the evacuation of the scientists from the failing outpost before warping home. You won, but the mission hadn't gone as planned, the new gatling gun placement had obscured the docking sites and the laser array couldn't orientate to get a targeting solution. Time for a complete re-build, before accepting the next job.....
Build a ship, accept a mission, level up and improve your craft design in Praxis the arcade space-builder prototype.....
Yo, back up now and give a brother room - the fuse is lit and it’s about to go.....
Welcome to Paradise City where the Midnight Toker is wrecking chaos with a series of highly charged devices configured to give Detective John McPhane a really bad day. Play on your desktop or strap on your VR headset, just don’t cut the wrong wire!
In this month’s fail master-class, Chris and Mark take a look at Wrong Wire - a puzzle based exploder. There are only three levels, so if you want to have a crack at them yourself make sure to download the build using the link that SendOwl sent you when you purchased access to this series, and give it a try before you watch this month’s vid.
The meteor orbits the gas giant, perilously close to the jump-portal. A lone astronaut bursts into existence, mining drill in hand and sets about extracting the valuable ore. Another appears and follows suit, then another….
Deep Space Industrial was an attempt to scratch a space-builder itch, learning from Spacebots and Order of Magnitude. Third time’s a charm? We’ll let you be the judge of that…..
Seize control of a swarm of space-droids to harvest resources, create defences and secure your asteroid system against the evil invading force and some weird space-squid things…
To kick things off we look at Order of Magnitude, an epic attempt to re-create Factorio in Space starting with a small colony on the moon and ending in a Dyson sphere - now what could possible go wrong with that…
Roughly once a month, Mark and Chris will release a video on the Introversion YouTube channel discussing an Introversion Prototype — what worked, what didn’t and why we ultimately abandoned it.
When we release the video we will add the playable prototype to the failure bundle. By making a donation to War Child using the links on this page you can access the bundle and will automatically be granted access to the new prototypes as they are released.
There is a minimum donation of $5, but please give more if you are in a position to do so - all of of the proceeds will go to helping children directly affected by war. Any questions get in touch - support@introversion.co.uk.
Wherever children are caught up in wars — whether they’ve lost their homes, families, schools, or been forced to take part in atrocities — War Child make it their mission to do what they can to help them. The work has evolved from temporary food aid to ongoing, sustainable projects that improve the long-term outcomes for the most vulnerable and marginalised children in conflict areas and they are still the only charity dedicated to protecting and speaking up for children affected by war. With more than 25 years of experience, War Child are acknowledged as experts at what they do, and a leading voice in the sector.
