Rare’s concept game Sundown brought to light

Rare has dropped quite the collection on the Xbox One this week with Rare Replay, a collection of 30 titles they’ve created over the last three decades. But along with the beloved (or infamous) titles on display, the game also includes a number of unlockable videos concerning projects that never made it past the concept stage. One of which is a horror title called Sundown, which puts players in an apocalyptic action setting against once-human creatures that take admitted inspiration from John Carpenter’s The Thing.

While the day/night and base defense mechanics shown have now been covered in spades by plenty of other horror titles over the last few years, more visceral body horror akin to Cronenberg’s works or Dead Space is a slightly rarer sight compared to standard zombie/parasite archetypes. The art team also notably shows off some child enemy ideas, an uncommon type of NPC in games that was scrapped as well due to its nature.

It’s slightly disappointing to see the concept stamped out, especially considering the developer’s only games released since 2010 were pure Kinect titles and a multi-team venture with Killer Instinct, but at least the team behind it have finally exposed it to the public.

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