An interesting looking game, which feels a bit like a mixture of Paradroid, Alien Syndrome and Citadel mixed together.
The game is currently bugged which you are able to check out, as the droid seems able to move through walls and things. Though the actual game looks as if it could have been a nice release if actually finished off. There is little to do here, apart from blow up some nice green switch thingy’s on the walls.
The music is by Rob Hubbard, but looks as if it were ripped from another game, possibly temporarily until the game’s proper music was composed.
Developer Mat Ellis got in touch in early 2021 and confirmed that the game was actually a port of Alien Syndrome for U.S. Gold before the deal was nabbed by ACE. They began to rework the port into Subclavian before another project came along and focus was switched over to that.
Mat confirms that the new rework of the Alien Syndrome game which had you running around a spaceship, avoiding/shooting mutants, saving prisoners and getting power ups. Essentially Subclavian was going to be exactly the same – but with a different story and robots instead of two hero humans, collecting robot parts and fighting other robots instead of aliens. A bit of a mix in with Uridium/Paradroid and Subvlavian was to be born.
What you see here is essentially how far the game got before cancellation, and Mat confirms there is nothing more sadly to find. A nice glimpse at what could have been a very different conversion of Alien Syndrome!
Case closed!
Contributions: Martin Holland, Mat Ellis
Supporting content
Available downloads
- Preview_Subclavian (zip)
Gallery
Update history
08/04/21 – Added credits and details about the game’s origins.
I wrote this game. Simon Dunstan was the artist. We were working on a port of Alien Syndrome for US Gold when something happened to the deal. We started reworking it when another game came along and we were switched to that.
Thanks Mat, that is very interesting to hear – i’ll give you a shout via email if that is ok? Will update the credits on the page now.