Back in 2021, the archival group Forest of Illusion dumped a prototype online of an unreleased Resident Evil-style action game for Nintendo DS called Perdition.
This game saw players take control of a character that looks extremely similar to Resident Evil's Leon S. Kennedy as they battled their way through an underwater base, blasting away hordes of zombies and other mutants.
Interestingly, very little information was shared about the history of the project back when it first made its way online, other than it was supposedly being developed by Velvet Games and Bauhaus Entertainment, and had been discovered in a lot of games from Little Worlds Studio. This has led some online, including the YouTuber Fan Game Fishing, to speculate recently that it may have been intended as a pitch for a Resident Evil game that never was.
Fan Game Fishing made the claim earlier this week in a video on their YouTube channel, where they also showed some never-before-seen footage of the later stages of the prototype that occur following a boss battle that was previously considered unwinnable.
Their argument seems to hinge on connections between elements of the prototype and those found within the Resident Evil games, as well as the title "Perdition" which seems to fit within the naming conventions of other pieces of media in the franchise that have often used a lot of "Christian-theology-like" terms like "Apocalypse", "Damnation", "Retribution", and "Revelations", etc. Additionally, they also make the point that this wouldn't be the first time a game intended to be the next entry in a classic survival horror series had to be reconfigured, referencing how Renegade Kid's Dementium: The Ward had initially started as a pitch for a new Silent Hill title.
We tried to do some of our own digging into the subject to see if we could uncover more connections, but have had somewhat mixed results so far. Searching for the Velvet Games in both English, for instance, doesn't turn up any matching results for the studio, or any current/former employees who may be able to provide some more context about the prototype. However, looking for Bauhaus Entertainment, we were able to see that it is actually a Japanese support studio that typically works on other company's games. Previous credits even include a couple of Capcom and Resident Evil titles, like Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition and Resident Evil 6.
Again, though, we haven't been able to find anyone who could confirm or deny this theory.
What do you think? Do you believe there's a connection? Or is this just a matter of coincidence? Let us know in the comments.