Three minutes of Darkside Games’ cancelled Phantom Dust reboot

Last month, news broke that Darkside Games, a Florida-based studio working on the Phantom Dust reboot for Xbox One, would be shut down and no longer develop the game. The reboot, however, is still in the works, albeit at a different studio (whether it be interally at Microsoft or externally at a second-party).

Kotaku obtained footage today of Darkside Games’ cancelled Phantom Dust, showing the “near-final” version of the game, which Darkside had shown Microsoft before their game was given the boot.

The three-minute video showcases a one-versus-one multiplayer battle, with a male player character dueling against Freia, from the original Phantom Dust.

“Each player would have an arsenal deck of cards (skills) they could mix and match to bring into a battle, but their cards/skills were randomly selected from the deck once in the battle,” the source who sent Kotaku the video said. “You’d have a starting hand (shown in the bottom right) and if you didn’t like that hand, you could do a re-roll at the start of the match. The orbs you pick up represent those cards/skills.”

According to the source, the original goal of the game was to keep 70 percent of the game true to the original Phantom Dust and make 30 percent of it new. But over time, it became more of an “85 percent remake, 15 percent new.”

The source continued, “I believe that the vertical slice we delivered was as good as anyone could have reasonably expected. It was very nearly E3 demo good, way beyond what a vertical slice should be. But apparently not good enough for [Microsoft]. And to hear them quickly say they’re finishing development elsewhere is certainly a slap.”

Watch the footage at Kotaku.