Not all game concepts make it to market, andOscuro: The Mystery of Hab-12is a documentary centered on a particularly mysterious title.Massimiliano Camassa, known on YouTube asCheeken, showcases the ill-fated 3rd person space adventureHab-12with help from some of the original developers.
Ratloop Games started development forHab-12in February of 1998, but the project was officially suspended around July of 1999. Over 20 years later, it is the subject of a film which will dig into the circumstances leading to the creation ofHab-12, the process of game development, and the circumstances which led to the title’s eventual scrapping. Cheeken will release the documentary to YouTube on September 15th, but a version is available for early viewing on Gumroad.
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Hab-12is avery mysterious titlewith almost nothing known publicly except that it was in development. Ratloop Games' website features only a short blurb on the title, along with screenshots and rendered elements from the game and two MP3 tracks. Ratloop Games is not doing anything with the title right now, but development “may be resumed in the future.”
The trailer for thisvideo game documentaryshows never-before-seen gameplay from demos provided by Ratloop Games. The unfinished game had scenery ranging from technologically advanced cities to orange-misted forests on some strange world. Carnivorous aliens, strange landscapes, and late-20th-century graphics gives it a look similar to thefirstHalf-Lifegame released by Valvearound the same time.
Running a 20-year-old game on a modern system is no easy feat, and Ratloop Games praised the YouTuber for his ingenuity. Since the code was never made to run onmodern graphics cards, Cheeken must have had to employ some sort of emulator. Running recording software on top of that makes the technical challenge much greater.
Oscuro: The Mystery of Hab-12will be available on YouTube on September 15th.
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