As spotted by the folks over at the Lost Media Busters, a demo of a cancelled PC game based on George Orwell's 1984 has just been preserved online, allowing players to experience a slice of what might have been.
Big Brother, as the project was called, was intended to be a first-person adventure game from the developer MediaX — a studio that had previously developed various multimedia projects such as Queensrÿche's Promised Land and the interactive autobiography On the Road with BB King.
It didn't follow the events of the novel but was instead pitched as a sequel, swapping out the book's protagonist Winston Smith for a brand new character called Eric Blair (a reference to Orwell's real name). The story follows Blair as he returns to his homeland, only to discover that his fiancee has gone missing and that the world is now dominated by Big Brother and the Thought Police.
As Blair, players would set off on a quest to find his missing fiancee, embarking across various levels filled with environmental puzzles and encountering revolutionaries who would offer their help in return for their assistance in bringing down Big Brother.
The game was teased throughout 1998, being showcased at E3 in 1998 and in magazines and news outlets, and was expected to launch in the Autumn/Fall of the same year. However, the project never ended up seeing the light of day, eventually missing its deadline and disappearing altogether.
All builds of the game were considered lost for good, until only a few days ago when a user named Shed_Troll uploaded a demo of the game to the archive.org. If you want to give the game a spin, you can grab it here.
You can also watch some footage of the demo below, which has been captured by Mr^Burns: