Sometimes we hear about a game that really impresses us a bit too early in development and it takes forever until you can actually play it. How about we share some of these games that captivated us and whether or not they lived up to expectations? After all, a burden shared is a burden halved.


For me it's definitely Gorogoa:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqQL0x8SmOA

I found out about it back in 2012 in an article about the Indiecade winners that year. Usually I wouldn't pay too much attention to unreleased games, but Gorogoa stood out by actually having a demo, I could actually try for myself this game that won whatever award that year. I played the demo and instantly fell in love. The release date at that point was 2013, so it's cool right? I wouldn't have to wait too long for it.

A year later I decided to check back on the game again, it should be out soon after all, just to find the release date pushed back to 2014. Replayed the demo and remembered how good it was. Rinse and repeat for 2015, 2016, and now finally in 2017 the game seems to be close being finished. It has a Steam store page, the game's website was reworked, the demo was removed, I imagine because the game has changed since 2012 when that demo came out. Spring 2017, finally.

Of course since the game isn't out yet I don't have an ending to this story, if it will live up to the expectations or if the game will instantly fall apart when I play the finished build.

The demo isn't in the website itself anymore, but the dev hasn't removed it from its uptodown account, you can find it here if you want to give it a try: Gorogoa Demo

Thank you for reminding me of Cube World! I hadn’t checked its situation in a long while. Nothing really new, though. Oh, well . . . maybe next time! ^_^

Beyond Good & Evil 2 and Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord for me. The rest are either games that were cancelled or never started like a few games Apogee previewed in their catalogs, Crusader: No Mercy, Amen: The Awakening, Deep Cover, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Prey 2, X-Com: Alliance, Urban Decay, Future Strike, and sequels teased at the end of games but never materialized like Shogo, Spycraft, Bioforge, XIII, System Shock 2, and Anachronox. And yes, I still hope that somehow some of these games could still be released. (T_T)

I kickstarted DriftStage a sick looking car game that you drift throughout the hole race and it was said to be released at the end of 2016. but the game is still in alpha as of now and looks like it will be released in 2021 by the looks of how things are going... Prob wont even play the game when it comes out :/


Well now I know just kickstart playing card decks for poker and stuff as that seems to be the safest thing to drop money on.

I'm not big on MMOs, but I've been waiting for a while now to see what comes out of Camelot Unchained, mostly because of the setting.

I've also been waiting for Lancelot's Hangover for about a year.

And I've been waiting for Warcraft IV for so long that in the mean time I pretty much lost interest in the RTS genre, and gave up on Blizzard entirely anyway.

Oh, and there's also Dudebro™ — My Shit Is Fucked Up So I Got to Shoot/Slice You II: It’s Straight-Up Dawg Time, but I think that one is pretty much dead in the water now.

Have you ever heard of Absolute Drift?

It has a top down view instead of behind the car like DriftStage, but it's very drift focused as well, as you may guess from the title. It could interest you while you're waiting for DriftStage.

Cuphead. Originally it was supposed to come out in 2015, first footage of actual gameplay was released in 2016, current release date is who knows when.

I even forgot all about it untill you reminded me just now. It looked really great.

The Guild 3:

I was hyped back in 2014 when this game was announced and couldn't wait until 2016, the game's original ETA. Now 2017 has begun and there's still no definite release date, I'm still hyped and waiting for it to be released.

Whoa, that was really beautiful and impressive. Now I'm hyped for this game too. :D


PS: Even though this demo has a Windows executable, it runs on Java so it should work in any OS. I ran it on my Arch Linux PC without issue (java -jar Gorogoa.jar).

Warcraft 2
Specifically that level. Our neighbour had Warcraft 2 and that is the first level I think I saw of the game. My pc couldn't handle it for some reason at the time, and I had to wait an agonizingly long time for my sound blaster 16 and cd drive to finally play the game for the first time. It was everything I hoped for and more. After all these years hearing the music and seeing that level still makes me intensely happy. It's my gaming happy place.

Little Big Adventure 2
I had the first game, and used to see the awesome trailer to the 2nd game all the time on my favorite video gaming tv program, Cybernet. I loved the first game, and really wanted to play the sequel, but at the time I was dependent on my parents to buy me games (after much begging that is). Problem is that either I never saw it on the shelves, or each time I wanted something else more (Tomb Raider, Commandos, ...). So I ended up waiting several years until I saw it in gog's catalog. Pretty much insta bought it and jumped right in.
It's a very good game and I had a great time with it, but I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would. I think the first game is superior.

Warcraft 3
This is the only one that I waited a long time for while it was still in development. For two years I gobbled up any info on the game I could find until I finally bought a copy in late 2002.
It was everything and more I ever hoped for and it's still my favorite RTS to this day.

GTA IV
This one I had to wait for a long time because I didn't have a pc capable of running it. It was one of the first games I got when I finally upgraded. And don't ask me how, but I somehow managed to activate the game without an internet connection on my pc, though I did have to download some codes vie their site at an internet cafe.
And again, the game was everything I hoped for and more. I loved how alive and more densely detailed the world was compared to GTA 3, and of the vastly improved game engine.

I've waited... what was it, 18 years? For Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans, untill it's "release" (leaked unfinished but playable build last year), and it... well, nothing could exactly live up to 18 years of waiting, but it was fun. If I got to play a finished version back in 1998 i would probably be one of my favourites.

I'd have to spend like two days reading up on all the WoW story and lore to even be properly outraged, and to have any clue what's going on in that universe. If they did announce Warcraft IV now and show a trailer I would have no idea what the hell is going on and who anyone is.

I don't think there's much chance for Warcraft IV, at least in the foreseeable future, and hasn't the RTS genre pretty much declined into insignificance anyway?
I also wouldn't trust Blizzard anymore with creating something really great...I've never been that much of a Warcraft fan, but really liked the original Starcraft. I did play through Starcraft 2's campaigns, almost up to the end of Legacy of the void...but that last instalment of the series totally killed my interest in the Starcraft universe. The story was idiotic, full of stupid retcons and mystical mumbojumbo about prophecies, none of which made sense.
EDIT: Since you were sort of asking about SC2: Personally I somewhat enjoyed Heart of the Swarm, its missions felt closer to the original Starcraft/Brood wars than WoL had, and you got a real sense of the power of the Zerg, overrunning all opposition in endless waves. That was fun (though not as great as it could have been). But the last part of the series, Legacy of the void, really sucks badly and is horribly boring. Mission design is still ok, if somewhat repetitive, but the story couldn't have been worse.