Cancellation of Sadness



Sadness was going to be a survival horror game developed by Polish company named Nibris, and was going to be one of the Nintendo Wii launch titles. Sadly, the game never came out, because it was cancelled in 2010.

Background
Sadness was announced on March 7, 2006, as a launch title for the Nintendo Wii (then codenamed Revolution), releasing a live-action concept trailer which demonstrated potential Wii Remote control in gameplay. Nibris partners with Frontline Studios and Digital Amigos, who will both develop game programming and the visuals, and was reported that it will be released by the fourth quarter of 2007.

Story
The game would have taken place in pre-World War I Russian Empire (modern Ukraine). The story was going to follow Maria Lengyel, an aristocrat of Polish-Hungarian descent, who has to protect her son Alexander after the train Lviv derails to the countryside. Alexander, struck by blindness thanks to the incident, begins to exhibit strange behaviours that become worse as the game progresses. The game's enemies and scenarios were based on Slavic mythology and were going to conclude with one of the ten possible endings. The developers promised that this survival horror game was going to focus on psychological horror, touching on narcolepsy, nyctophobia, and paranoid schizophrenia.

Cancellation
Despite receiving positive views for the black and white aesthetic and unique gameplay, Sadness became notorious for its development hell that lasted for four years, with no evidence of a playable demo, trailer, or even a screenshot, Nibris even failed to make an appearance at GDC 2008 conference. The game was delayed numerous times before being pushed to a 2009 release, missing the launch title as a result. In the same year, it was revealed by a former screenwriter for Sadness, Adam Artur "UncleMroowa" Antolski, that the game's delays were caused by a 4th-year dispute over game design, constant struggles with the developers, and horrendous deadlines, with the only confirmed work they have done, was the script, concept design and one 3D object, possibly a minecart. It was also revealed that one of the former composers of the game, Arkadiusz Reikowski, released his unfinished songs in public, confirming that the project was abandoned by the team and no longer in the works as a result. After the game's cancellation in 2010, the company closed permanently and the remaining staff were reportedly moved to Bloober Team after the former was transformed into a coordinator for the European Center of Games, making Double Bloob (released in December 2010) as the only game released by Nibris before ceasing game development.

There was hope that the game could have resurfaced for modern consoles, and it almost got one. In an interview with Nintendo Life in 2014, indie developers Randy Freer of HullBreach Studios and Jeremy Kleve of Cthulhu Game claimed that they acquired the rights from Nibris, and they planned to collaboratively re-developing the game's entire concept from scratch for a 2016 Wii U-exclusive release. The next day, however, they retracted their claim, stating that they have failed to acquire the rights of the property. The cancellation of Sadness served as a cautionary tale on game development, and because of the problems mentioned above, it will never be resurrected and never saw the light to this day. Fortunately for the former staff though, they joined Bloober Team not long after, and have made good games like Layers of Fear and Observer since then.