My first encounter with Beyond was through a prototype added to the Hidden Palace website some time ago now, which was more specifically released by CVLT OF OSIRIS.

It seemed odd that there was so little information available about the game in the wild, and absolutely no information that I could find explaining why it was cancelled.

Back in 2021, I was very fortunate to be able to get in touch with producer Goran Milisavljevic, 3D artist Aleksandar Novta, and programmer Marko Djurovic, to get some more information about the title which I’m finally sharing here. Unfortunately, due to how long it’d been, there was only so much they could share.

Additionally, as I couldn’t find any existing footage on YouTube of the prototype, I’ve provided some gameplay footage below recorded on real hardware.

The video above may be blocked due to copyrighted music used in the prototype, in which case I’ll be putting the video up elsewhere soon.

edit: turns out that PtoPOnline had already captured footage, so an alternate capture is available here.

These answers were kindly provided by Goran Milisavljevic, the producer on the game, based on a series of questions I’d provided. I’ve laid them out below in a Q&A form.

How far along were you in developing the game before ceasing development?

We developed a working prototype for the Xbox platform. Besides the prototype that contained one complete medium size mission, we also had a well-developed game design document with detailed description for the complete game, covering all levels, enemies and collectables. Also, concept art was around 75% finished.

Did the game use a custom engine, or is it based on something else (i.e. RenderWare)?

We were accepted to Microsoft’s Xbox Registered Developers programme, so we received two Xbox dev consoles and were using Microsoft’s XDK. Besides this, we were using RenderWare for rendering, FMod for sound, Bullet for physics and everything else was developed in-house.

How big was the team working on the game?

The team had 4 programmers, 5 artists and 2 game designers.

Were there any plans to bring it to other platforms, or was it being developed specifically for the Xbox only? If so, what were the motivations?

We were misled by a “big name” consultant who insisted that we should develop for Xbox exclusively. At GDC 2005, we found out that this decision was fatal for the company, since the publishers we had contacts with showed us that their plans for the next 5 years didn’t include any Xbox titles, only titles for the next gen consoles (Xbox 360 and PS3).

Based on this prototype at GDC 2005, people from Sony offered us to develop for them a PS3 game based on the “Starship Trooper” movie. However, our investor declined this offer and this meant the end of the road for us.

Marko Djurovic, a programmer on the game, also recounted details behind the development of the game and the prototype.

The idea was that Beyond should be a space TPS.

The initial idea was that NPCs have some kind of primitive AI, but later that idea was abandoned, and in demo, the NPCs were script driven.

I’m not entirely sure what was meant by script driven here, as the NPCs in the prototype seem to have some basic level of AI. However, this may explain why internally in the demo there’s a BStupidNPC type? Though this wasn’t something I was able to confirm.

Target platform was the original Xbox.

I can’t remember the full story now, but the team spent months developing the story behind the game. The engine was a mix of an in-house engine with some commercial engine (can’t remember name). For animations, we used motion capture with the help of professional models.

Sound and music was made by professional musicians.

The commercial engine referred to here was likely RenderWare, as mentioned by Goran Milisavljevic.

As far as I’m aware, we unfortunately don’t get to hear any of the custom music that was produced for the game in the prototype. Much of the music there seems to be pulled from the Animatrix and The Matrix Revolutions, very likely as placeholders.

I think at that time members of the team were the best game developers in the region. Unfortunately, after a successful demo, we ran out of funds (through the fault of the CEO).

Sorry this was a long time ago, so I forgot many things, but I can remember it was hell of the ride. We were young and often working 40 hours without a pause.

I originally provided much of this for a since unlisted video produced by Techmo Snowspark; hence why there’s been a wait on getting these published on the site.

Big thanks to them for answering my questions about the game. This provides some more context for the prototype and its fate.

Until next time! 👋

Update: Andrew Borman, a director at The Strong National Museum of Play, kindly alerted me to the fact that the developers released two design documents related to the game online at some point in the past. I’ve now mirrored these here and here.