2015 Sacred Square Games
Platforms: PC and potentially others
As part of the launch and release of The Games That Weren’t book, we are adding assets and content that didn’t make it to print as bonus DLC content to share with you.
Within the book is an in-depth and detailed 10 page story about the unreleased Subtraddition by Sacred Square Games, where we spoke to its creator Stuart Lilford. One of the things we wanted to do in the book was to not only cover high profile cancellations in the final chapter, also at least one indie development and a few mobile-based developments. Showcasing how far spread game development is today and how cancellations are happening all the time, no matter the budget and target audience.
Subtraddition was an exciting 2D platformer, inspired by titles such as Super Mario World, FEZ, Braid and various Flash based games. It began as an exercise on trying to do a platforming game, which became initially frustrating to test – so Stuart added in a feature to subtract and add platform blocks directly into the game to help out. It triggered a “Eureka!” moment which resulted in Subtraddition (a clever mix of subtract and addition to refer to the block idea).
The blocks you could add or remove were to have a number of different functions, which would allow for a puzzle element to be included within the game. The full story of what happened to the game and the plans for it can be found in the book. However, whilst talking to Stuart, he very kindly provided a demo of the game (which we have produced a short video to show here), and a number of scans/photos of his ideas. Sadly we couldn’t include them all in the book, so here are the ones which didn’t make it to print.
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